Daniel Polansky - Low Town

I negotiated my way through the maze, half-forgotten memories guiding me right or left. My cigarette went out but I didn’t have the energy to relight it, and I stuffed the butt into my coat pocket rather than dirty the Crane’s patio.

One last turn and I was facing the entrance, an outline of a door in the sheer wall, absent knocker or other obvious means of ingress. Perched on an indentation above it was a gargoyle, white stone like the maze, its maw locked in something closer to a smirk than a grimace. Seconds passed. I was glad no one was around to witness my cowardice. Finally I decided that I hadn’t traversed the maze for nothing, and rapped twice on the frame.

“Greetings, young one.” The voice the Crane had created for his watchman was incongruous with its purpose, lighter and friendlier than one would expect from the creature’s composition. Its concrete eyes looked me up and down slowly. “Perhaps not so young these days. The Master has been alerted, and will receive you in the loft. I have standing orders to allow you entry should you ever arrive.”

The crack in the facade widened, stone sliding against stone. Above it the gargoyle’s face contorted smugly, no small feat for a creature composed of mineral. “Although I didn’t think I’d ever need to follow them.”

Not for the first time I wondered what in the name of the Firstborn had possessed the Crane to imbue his creation with a sense of sarcasm, there being no great shortage of it among the human race. I stepped into the foyer without responding.

It was small, little more than a platform for the long circular stairway that led skyward. I began the climb to the upper floors, my path illuminated by evenly spaced wall sconces leaking a clear white light. Halfway up I stopped to catch my breath. This had been a lot easier as a child, sprinting up the curving stone with the abandon of someone who was not a hardened tobacco addict. After a rest I continued my ascent, fighting the urge to retreat with every step.

A spacious living room took up most of the top floor of the Aerie. The furniture was neat and functional, making up in clean aesthetic what it lacked in opulence. Two large chairs sat before a narrow fireplace built into the dividing wall that separated this area from the Master’s private quarters. The decor had remained unaltered since I had first glimpsed the interior, and unbidden memories came to mind of winter afternoons by the fire and of a childhood best forgotten.

I watched him, silhouetted against the great glass window looking southeast over the harbor. From that height the stink and hustle of Low Town evaporates, giving way to the endless ocean in the distance. He turned slowly and placed his withered hands over mine. I was conscious of my desire to look away. “It’s been too long,” he said.

The years showed. The Crane has always been wizened, his body too thin to support his height, scraggly tufts of white hair sprouting from his head and bony chin. But also he’d always possessed an improbable energy which seemed to make a lie of his age. I could detect little trace of it any longer. His skin was stretched thin as paper, and there was a jaundiced tinge to his eyes. At least his costume remained unchanged, an unadorned robe, rich blue like everything else in his citadel.

“My greetings to you, Magister,” I began. “I appreciate you seeing me without an appointment.”

“Magister? Is that how you greet the man who rubbed unguent on your scraped knees and made you boiled chocolate to ward off the cold?”

It was clear he wasn’t going to make this easy. “I thought it inappropriate to presume on past intimacies.”

His expression soured, and he pulled his arms firm across each other. “I understand your reticence to return-even as a child you had more pride than half the royal court. But don’t suggest that I turned my back on you, or ever would. Even after you left the Crown’s service and… took up your new vocation.”

“You mean after I was stripped of my rank and started selling drugs on the street?”

He sighed. I could remember him making that same sound when I came to him with a bruised eye from fighting, or he realized I’d stolen whatever new toy I was playing with. “I spent years trying to break you of that habit.”

“What habit?”

“This way you have of taking everything as an insult. It’s a sign of low breeding.”

“I am lowbred.”

“You could work harder to hide it.” He smiled and I found myself doing the same. “Regardless, you have returned, and as grateful as I am to see you, I can’t help but wonder to what I owe the reappearance of my prodigal son? Unless you reappeared at my doorstep after five years solely to inquire of my health?”

When I was a child, the Crane had been my benefactor and protector, doing me what kindnesses the fiercest urchin in Low Town would accept. As an agent, I had often turned to him, both for advice and for the assistance his prodigious skill could offer. Yet for all my practice this newest round of supplication choked me on its way out. “I need your help.”

His face tensed up, a fair reaction to a plea for aid from a man he hadn’t spoken to in half a decade, particularly one on the wrong side of the law. “And what services do you require?”

“I found Little Tara,” I said, “and I need to know if you’d picked up anything on her from your channels. If there’s a divination you think might be helpful, I’d ask you to do that as well, and without alerting Black House or the appropriate ministry.”

I suppose he had assumed I was there for money or for something illicit. The discovery that I was not evoked the return of his natural demeanor, amiable and slightly mischievous. “It seems I was confused about the full range of your new duties.”

“I’m not sure I take your meaning,” I said, though of course I did.

“Let me be clearer, then. How exactly does finding the murderer of a child fit into your current purview?”

“How does aiding a criminal fall into the purview of a First Sorcerer of the Realm?”

“Hah! First Sorcerer!” He coughed into his hand, a wet and unpleasant sound. “I haven’t been to court since the Queen’s Jubilee. I don’t even know where my robes are.”

“The ones trimmed with gold thread and worth half the docks?”

“Damnable things itched my throat.” The Crane’s laughter was forced, and after it was over the afternoon light fell on an old and tired man. “I’m sorry, my friend, but I’m not sure there’s anything I can offer. Yesterday evening, when I heard of the offense, I ran a message to a contact in the Bureau of Magical Affairs. They said they put a scryer on it but came up with nothing. If they couldn’t pick up anything, I don’t imagine I would have any more luck.”

“How is that possible?” I asked. “Was the scrying blocked?”

“It would take an artist of exceptional ability to completely cover any trace of his presence. There aren’t two dozen practitioners in all Rigus capable of such intricate work, and I don’t imagine any of them would resort to so vile an undertaking.”

“Power is no guarantee of decency, more often the opposite-but I’ll grant you a mage of such ability would have easier means of satisfying his desires should they incline in that direction.” I could feel the old muscles working again, stretching off their torpor after years of neglect. It had been a long time since I’d investigated anything. “Apart from magic, what else would work against your scrying?”

He took a decanter of vile-looking green liquid from above the mantel, then poured it into the tumbler that sat next to it. “Medicine, for my throat,” he explained, before downing the fluid in one quick gulp. “If her body had been cleaned very thoroughly or sanitized with some kind of chemical. If the clothing she was wearing had only been in contact with her a short time, that might do it as well. It’s not my specialty-I’m not really certain.”