Daniel Polansky - Low Town

I turned down a nondescript side street, hoping the ache in my chest didn’t signal a fever. The alley was organized according to the commercial instincts of the heretics, a dozen shops subdividing the hundred-yard stretch of street, each announcing its wares with brightly colored signs covered with Kiren characters and pidgin Rigun. I stepped into one midway down the alley, distinguished only by its curiously bland bill, a small, fading tablet that read simply DRESS.

Inside sat a frowning grandmother, ancient as stone, the sort of creature whose youth seemed even theoretically impossible, as if she had sprung from the womb wizened and oak-tree old. She was surrounded on all sides by bolts of colored cloth and bright ribbons, strewn about without regard for organization or aesthetic. Anyone foolish enough to enter in the hopes of purchasing the advertised merchandise would find themselves quickly disabused by the state of disrepair, but then the old bitch made more than enough with her illicit dealings to forgo the troublesome sideline of legitimate mercantilism.

The proprietress waved me to the back room without comment. It was tiny and dirty, with a swivel stool in the center. The walls were occupied by shelves of medical supplies, poultices, drafts, and alchemical ingredients of all kinds. Most of these were almost certainly useless, but then medicine is half illusion anyway, and two thirds among the heretics.

I sat down on the chair and began to disrobe, the dowager looking on unhappily. Once my shirt was off she took hold of my arm, not roughly but with less tenderness than I’d have preferred given the agony shooting through my left side. She inspected my injury and chattered away in her foreign tongue, the words indecipherable but the tone astringent.

“What do you want from me? You’re right, I should have seen it coming-Beaconfield as much as warned me. I figured he’d need longer to man himself into it.”

She started pulling jars from her shelves, inspecting and re-inspecting the unlabeled bottles in a fashion that did not do wonders for my confidence. She settled on one and poured the contents into a strange-looking kettle, then set that on the iron furnace pumping heat from the corner of the room. We waited for it to boil, time the matron spent glowering at me and muttering incomprehensible pejoratives. Then she pulled out a small vial from a fold in her robes and shook it enticingly.

“I probably shouldn’t-I have a pretty firm no-opiates-before-brunch rule.”

She pushed it at me again, insisting in her singsong.

I sighed and waved her forward. “It’s on your conscience.”

She pulled a tiny dropper out of the vial and placed a bead on my tongue. It tasted acrid and unpleasant. The drug went back into her pocket, replaced by a small blade she cleaned with a length of cloth.

My vision was spinning and it was hard to concentrate. She pointed to my arm. I tried to think of something witty but couldn’t. “Do it,” I said.

With one firm hand she pushed my shoulder back against the chair and dragged her blade quickly against the abscess that had formed where the Blade’s man had tagged me. I bit my tongue till I tasted blood.

Grandma moved on to the next part of her work without offering much in the way of sympathy. While she was puttering about in the corner I made the poor decision to inspect the now reopened wound, with predictable effects on my digestive track. Seeing me turn green, she dashed over and smacked me once across the cheek, pointing her finger in my face and letting forth with a stream of invective. I twisted my head away from the laceration, and she returned to the stove and poured the contents of the now steaming kettle into a small clay cup.

She moved back toward my chair, and the look in her eyes was enough to let me know that what was coming wasn’t going to be fun. I gripped the underside of my seat as tightly as my body would allow and nodded. She raised the tumbler.

Then I did scream, a bright exultation of torment as she dribbled the boiling liquid into my wound, the fierce heat torture against my torn muscle. I took a few deep breaths while water drained from my eyes.

“Why don’t you break that vial back out?”

She ignored me, waiting for the wax to harden. After a moment she pulled out a blunt iron tool and began to scrape away the excess resin.

“You’re a fucking cunt,” I said. “Sakra’s swinging cock, I hate you.”

It was impossible to imagine she hadn’t picked up a smattering of obscenities during her long years of providing medical attention to criminals, but if she understood me she gave no sign. The pain receded to a dull warmth, and I sat in silence as she pulled out a needle and began sewing up my arm. Whatever was in that bottle was absolutely amazing-I was barely aware she was even there. After a few minutes she cocked her head curiously and gibbered what sounded like a question.

“I told you. The Smiling Blade did this-you should be proud. I’m not some bullyboy stumbling in here ’cause he lost a knife fight. Important people are trying to kill me.”

She smirked and drew her thumb across her throat, the universal symbol for murder, evil being man’s mother tongue.

“I’d love to, believe me, but you can’t just sneak into the bedroom of a noble and put a razor to his windpipe.”

By that point her interest had faded and she went back to sewing shut my wound. I enjoyed a comfortable few moments basking in a static narcotic glow, so deeply anesthetized that I didn’t even notice she was done until she shook my shoulder roughly, threatening to undo the work she had just completed.

I brushed her hand off and looked at her craftsmanship. It was first-rate, as always. “Thanks,” I said. “Hopefully I won’t see you again for a while.”

She muttered something that suggested she held little faith in my prophetic abilities and held up five fingers.

“Are you out of your mind! I could get an arm reattached for that!”

She narrowed her eyes at me and lowered two digits.

“That’s more like it.” I set three ochres on the table, and she scooped them up and tucked them quickly into her robes. I grabbed my shirt and coat, putting them on as I walked outside. “As always, whatever language you speak, anyone hears about this visit and you’ll need to find someone better with that scalpel than you are.”

She didn’t answer, but then she wouldn’t. By the time the painkiller wore off, I was halfway to Low Town and it had started to snow again.

Back at the Earl I got to watch Adolphus try and pretend he hadn’t been worrying about me. His shoulders tensed up as I came in, but then he returned to wiping the counter with little more than a grunt. I took a seat at the bar.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” I responded. “Just out late, didn’t want to walk home with the weather.”

It was clear he didn’t believe me. “These came for you while you were out.” He handed me a pair of envelopes, and waited while I tore open the seals.

The first, tight script against cream-colored paper, was from Celia. My workings have borne fruit. You will find evidence of the Blade’s crimes in a hidden chamber in the desk in his study, beneath a false bottom. Good luck. C

Short as it was I had to read it twice to make sure I got it right. Then I set it aside, trying to keep the smile off my face. I’d all but forgotten about the working Celia had promised to perform-those things rarely go as advertised, and never quickly enough to be of help. But if she was right, then I had a line on something real I could take to Black House. I set my mind toward Beaconfield’s mansion, and the machinations that would be required to again gain entrance to it.

Wren bolted his way in from the back room, so finely attuned to the mood of the place he could tell when I’d arrived. Which was good, because there was a man I needed to make contact with, and I didn’t feel like walking. “You need to run a message for me.”