Daniel Polansky - Low Town

I walked back into the Virgin and saw Spider sprinting down the steps at full speed, blood seeping from his nose, his blade in his hand. He snarled and came at me wildly-foolish, but then Spider was the sort of man who gets rattled by a little pain. I met him halfway and dropped low, setting my shoulder into his knees and sending him hurtling down the stairs. Turning back to finish the job, I saw the white press of bone sticking out from his hand and knew there was no point in further violence. I left him cradling his wrist and shrieking like a newborn.

Back on the second floor the patrons were pressed against the walls, waiting to see the outcome. At some point while I was busy below, Tancred had grabbed a heavy wooden truncheon, and he rapped it against his outstretched palm. His warped face was twisted into a death mask and there was a long line of notches on the handle of his club, but his eyes were wide and I knew he would go down easy.

I ducked as his cudgel wheezed over my head, then balled my fist into his stomach. Tancred stumbled backward, gasping for air, waving his bludgeon impotently. On the second swing I caught his wrist and twisted it savagely, pulling him close as he screamed and dropped his weapon. I held his gaze with mine, his ruined lips trembling, then struck him a blow that collapsed his legs under him.

He lay at my feet, weeping piteously. The small crowd of spectators stared back at me, bulbous drunkard noses and mongoloid idiot eyes, a menagerie of inbred grotesques, mouth breathers, and vermin. I had the urge to grab Tancred’s cudgel and wade into them, just start clubbing heads, crack crack crack, soak the sawdust red. I shook it off, telling myself it was just the breath. It was time to end this, but not too quickly. Theatricality mattered-I wanted these dregs to spread what they were seeing.

I dragged Harelip’s limp body toward a nearby table and stretched one arm across the wood. Holding his palm flat with my left hand, I took his small finger firmly in my right. “What’s our boundary?” I asked, snapping his digit.

He screamed but didn’t answer.

“What’s our boundary?” I continued, breaking the next finger. He was weeping now, gasping for air and barely capable of speech. He’d need to make the attempt. I twisted another finger. “You’ve got a whole other hand I haven’t touched!” I was laughing and wasn’t sure if it was part of the act. “What’s our boundary?”

“The canal!” he shrieked. “The canal is the boundary!”

The bar was silent but for his wailing. I swiveled my head at the onlookers, savoring the moment, then continued in a voice loud enough to be heard by the first ranks of the audience. “Your business ends at the canal. Forget again and they’ll find you floating in it.” I pulled back his last finger and let him fall to the ground, then turned and walked slowly out. Spider sat slumped against the bottom of the stairs, and he looked away as I passed.

A dozen blocks east, the breath wore off and I put my arm against an alley wall and spewed until I could barely breathe, sinking into the muck and grime. I knelt there for a while, waiting for my heartbeat to return to normal. On the way up my leg gave out, and I had to buy a crutch off a fake cripple so I could hobble the rest of the way home.

I awoke with a headache that made my swollen ankle feel like a hand-job from a ten-ochre-an-hour hooker. I tried to stand, but my vision swirled and my stomach let me know it was up for a repeat of last night’s performance, so I sat back down. Prachetas’s cunt, if I never took another whiff of pixie’s breath it would be too damn soon.

The sun streaming through my window meant it was past noon. My feeling has always been that if you’ve missed the morning you might as well go ahead and skip the afternoon as well, but there was work to do. I steadied myself, then pulled on my clothes and walked downstairs.

I took a seat at the counter. Adolphus had forgotten to cover his eye, and the recess in his skull wagged disapproval at me. “It’s too late for eggs. Don’t even ask.” I had figured one o’clock was probably past the breakfast rush but wasn’t happy to have my suspicions confirmed. “The boy from last night has been waiting for you to wake up for the past three hours.”

“Is there any coffee at least? And where is my shadow exactly?”

“There is none, and he’s in the corner.” I turned to see the youth uncurl from a wall. He had an odd talent for remaining unnoticed, or maybe my hangover was worse than I’d thought.

We looked at each other in silence, some natural reserve keeping him from beginning. “I didn’t idle half the morning away in front of your door,” I said. “What do you want?”

“A job.”

He was direct, at least, and concise-that was something. My head was pounding and I was trying to figure out where my breakfast would come from. “And what possible use could you be to me?”

“I could do things for you. Like last night.”

“I don’t know how often you think I stumble over the corpses of missing children, but last night was kind of a rare occurrence. I don’t think I can justify a full-time employee waiting around for it to happen again.” This objection seemed to do little to sway him. “What is it you think I do exactly?”

He smiled slyly, like he’d done something wrong and was happy to let me know it. “You run Low Town.”

And what a lovely fiefdom it was. “The guards might dispute that.”

He snorted. It was worth snorting over.

“I had a long night. I’m not in the mood for this nonsense. Get lost.”

“I can run errands, deliver messages, whatever you need. I know the streets like the back of my hand. I can tussle, and nobody sees me that I don’t want to.”

“This is a one-man operation. And if I was to bring on an assistant, my first requirement would be that his balls had dropped.”

The abuse did little to faze him. No doubt he’d heard far worse. “I came through yesterday, didn’t I?”

“Yesterday you walked six blocks and didn’t fuck me. I could train a dog to do the same thing, and I wouldn’t need to pay him.”

“Give me something else, then.”

“I’ll give you a beating if you don’t scramble,” I said, raising my hand in something meant to resemble a menacing gesture.

To judge by his lack of reaction, he was unimpressed with the threat. “By the Lost One, you’re a tiresome little bastard.” The walk downstairs had reawakened the fierce pain in my ankle, and all this conversation was upsetting my stomach. I fished into my pocket and brought out an argent. “Run over to the marketplace and get me two blood oranges, a dish of apricots, a ball of twine, a coin purse, and a pruning knife. And if I don’t get half of it back in change, I’ll know you’re either a cheat or too stupid to haggle a fair price.”

He hurried off with a speed that made me wonder if he would remember everything. Something about the boy made me unlikely to bet against him. I turned back around and waited for breakfast to arrive, but found myself distracted by the scowl atop Adolphus’s girth.

“You have something to say?”

“I didn’t know you were so desperate for a partner.”

“What did you want me to do, clip him?” I rubbed slow circles into my temple with my middle and forefingers. “Any news?”

“They’re having a funeral for Tara outside the Church of Prachetas in a few hours. Don’t suppose you’ll attend?”

“You don’t suppose correctly. Anything else making the rounds?”

“Word has spread of your encounter with Harelip, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It was.”

“Well, it has.”

It was about then that my brain decided the time had come to free itself from its long years of imprisonment, and began a furious if unproductive effort to batter through its casing. From the back Adeline noticed my agony and set a pot of coffee boiling.