FOUNDRYSONG Chapter 4: History

 The Pen was almost one hundred years old. Charity Is Eternal, the Leovin Revelationist architect who drafted the plans, was long in the ground. His works still stood. The tomblike structure of the Pen dominated its hollow in Centrum Hills. Charity was from the Society of Pastoral Friends, or the Pastoralists. By the early spring of 5729 when Tyrsis Trist was being held “for his own protection” (charges pending), they were nearly extinct.

The Pastoralists had come to the New Territories in the mid-55^th century. They refused to fight in the Closure or the Slave War. They wouldn’t serve in the navy, the air force, or the army. The handful left even rejected the fight in Aonrijk when it was clear Cinder City would need to intervene. They were, to most in the City, a strange branch of cowards and shirk-duties.

The funny thing about them was, they loved work. Oh, more even than anyone could rightly believe. The Cinder City Penitentiary was originally just that: a penitentiary, somewhere to be penitent about your crimes. A place for absolution. To the Pastoralists it was the ultimate church. Long ago, when they were more numerous, they got the Stadtprasident’s blessing to build a work camp in the middle of their community in Centrum. That was before Cinder City had spread all over the peninsula and the islands, when there was still green and growing land this side of the Treaty Territories. This work camp was erected for “the betterment of the poor, destitute, and criminal.” In the last century, there was a mania in the city and the New Territories to put away the poor, shut them up in work houses and make use of them, like the crown of Ae Vira did across the sea.

There were so many poor people in those days. The refuse of the Slave War and the impoverished beggars of the Great Immigration were floating around without anywhere to land. They needed to be tied down. They needed labor. “Is it not labor,” asked Charity to his congregation, “that makes man free?”

That’s what. Good honest work. Stadtprasident Joseph E. Watts gave a speech before Parliament in 5631, a year after the Slave War began. He stood at the head of Parliament Hall in that mighty rostrum, a figure out of some Revelationist scripture. He towered above the marble podium of the Speaker, an iron rod in a black suit. “Esteemed MPs,” he said, “even now, while our fine armies fight and die against the Slaver rebels in the New Territories, the city itself, our beloved home, is flooded with the wrack and ruin of that conflict. Look, and you will see shivering, huddled beggars swarming the old city. They ride across the waves in steamships and leaky tubs for the mere hope, the mere whisper, of the freedom of the Territories. But when they arrive, they are without roots. How can a man without roots achieve that dream of which we are all so proud?

“Yes, they are of lesser, Continental races. They will never match the proud Aonic and Ae Viran stock. Yet, should they not have the freedom at least to expend the sweat of their brow and apply their muscle to some productive venture? As it is they stand wasted and wasting on our streets, becoming gamblers, stewpots of disease, drunks, slaves to the foul sirensong. We owe them, and ourselves, this much.

“And if the Pastoralists will not fight, well; let them instead reform. That is why they came to Cinder City after all. They are reformers! And what shall they reform? Not us, esteemed Members of Parliament, nor our fine families. Those are in need of no re-formation! But the bodies of the sickly, the withered, and the feeble; the offspring of the slave races, the lesser Continental races. Why should these not be re-formed? They beg us to give them but the permission to form the mould. And what will its shape be? A labor farm in the dusty fields of Centrum, which they already own. Then this chamber is not only correct, but morally obligated to give them permission to reform these criminals.

“We shall send the scum of the city to the Pastoralists. They will be returned to us as new men.”

The bill was, of course, signed. The camp was established. Charity set his mass of immiserated poor to work. The Special Constables (there were no Blues then, and wouldn’t be for several decades) poured people into the Pastoralist camp.

At first they built wooden bungalows at Charity’s direction. That was where they would live. Then they tended the Pastoralists fields. When they had too many prisoners, the Pastoralists started renting them out to other farmers to help with upkeep. Soon, Charity and his reformists were making money. A little later than that, and they were making money hand over fist, as the bankers said.

The prisoners were made to build a chapel, of course. Charity Is Eternal stood at the pulpit every Sunday and talked a lot about the Autothons. That’s fancy preacher talk for the Fabricators, in case you didn’t know. He said a mighty bit about Correis, Autothon of Darkness and the Deep, who made mankind, and some about Heavenly Artax, master of the skies and lightning, who made the elves. As to Karzel and the dwarves he said little; Charity didn’t know much about them. The least, of course, was given to Earthly Georn, Autothon of the lowly orc and ogre, spirit of mud, fire, and earth.

He should have, though, because it was mud, fire, and earth he hoped to use as purgative forces to remold the poor sinners in his charge.

Now there were escapes from Charity’s camp. There were occasional bouts of violence. From time to time a work-gang would gather up some farm implements or stone-crushing picks and swing them at Charity’s poor Pastoralists. These folk weren’t equipped to deal with hardened criminals. Charity thought long and hard about how to solve this problem. It was easier once there was money coming in.

Charity decided to change his labor camp to a cathedral of reform, a true castle, a fortress. This could be staffed by hired hands to help the Pastoralists. With all that money it wasn’t hard to hire masons. They already had the work-force they needed. So what if a few died while they stacked the titanic blocks? The granite went up course after course. Charity felt like a giant himself, an autothon Fabricator. His castle would have private cells for reflection, for penance, and great public grounds for labor. His prisoners would be guarded, would work anywhere in the city where labor was needed, for pennies on the dollar. Why not? They got what they needed from the Pastoralists, and the only pay they deserved was Charity’s kindly mercy in rebuilding their souls.

When Charity died, the Pen went to the city. There weren’t enough Pastoralists to run it themselves. That was alright. The city could do it. Contentin Lord Bellwright got wind of the transfer around the time he built the Bluebell Constables.

He wrote in his diary, “It shall provide a most suitable place for the criminal degenerate, the weak of mind, and the violent of temperament.”

It was one of those penitential cells that held Tyrsis Trist. In another, waited John Messina.

 

It was late on Friday night, but Tyrsis was allowed to stay late in the library. The first day, they didn’t make him work at all. The warden had come to see him first thing. He threw a shadow larger than his diminutive frame. Might radiated from him in the way the guards scraped and bowed. His boots never seemed to touch the ground. The grime of the walls couldn’t reach him. He had looked at Tyrsis while twiddling his mustache. He never said anything, only looked.

Tyrsis wasn’t placed on the gravel-breaking line. He wasn’t well enough. There were rumors at mess it was because people wanted to kill him, but he was doing a pretty good job of killing himself. After the eighth hour without a touch of the giantsblood, his body went into full rebellion. His sweat had a caustic, acid smell. His eyes refused to focus. His stomach was in a riot. Every ten or fifteen minutes, someone in his guts pulled at them with both hands and twisted them into a knot. It made him moan, stagger, crash bodily into the walls, vomit up every meal, and cling like a drowning rat to his prison-issue cot.

A day of this saw him through to the other side. He was thin and pale, even for an elf. The block supervisor told him he was being assigned to the library, so to the library he went. Tyrsis didn’t have much to recommend him for the position. He cringed down the corridors, flinched at every sound, and cowered when he got there.

Things were truly miserable for Tyrsis Trist. He had killed a child. He had killed a child and a mother. He was the lowest creature in the Umwelt. He was no elf, he was a crawling slime, a shambling corpse bloated with death-gas. He was nothing. He had been nothing for a long time. What am I, but a vessel for the stuff? The Stuff. The fire. The giantsblood.

It had hollowed him out from the inside. He remembered taking a quart of unrefined blood from an ersatzmann on Ascher Boulevard. The bastard was asleep by a trash can. He had the ruby red bottle tucked into his coat under the metal arm that drank it. It was… Artax, how long ago? December? November? Of last year. Must have been December, because it was snowing. The ersatz sap was half-buried in a drift. He knew, of course he knew, he should have hauled him out of the snow and into the warmth. He knew. But instead he took the blood and went to a dark place to drink it and revel in its flame.

Now his body, though purged of the poisonous liquor, still bore the marks of the crash and the welts where the blood had poured over his flesh and caught fire. Giantsblood didn’t bear exposure to the atmosphere. Too much oxygen or something, Tyrsis didn’t know the particulars.

The list of things Tyrsis didn’t know could fill a library far larger than the one in the Pen. It sat in the basement of the chapel tower and smelled like mold. Tyrsis didn’t like it. The Penitentiary was enough like a tomb already. He deserved the tomb, the ground, the noose, whatever the punishment was for his crimes. He hunched, he shrank, he crawled.

But he was allowed to stay there long after lockdown. Tyrsis became, with some rapidity, the night librarian. “It’s for your own safety, elf,” the guards growled. That is, he couldn’t leave his cell during the daytime because someone is going to try to kill you. Hey, you killed a kid! It’s only natural someone in here is gonna make the attempt. You wanna live to see tomorrow, you stay on the reverse schedule. Out at night, in during the day.

Tyrsis didn’t mind too much. He was used to a schedule like that. He’d worked nights for years, back before the job with Smith & Bros. He was an odd-job-man, a driver, a help-find-it-man. He had been an occasional pickpocket and keyman, too, when times were rough. For a little while, back during the election, he actually managed to clean himself up, kick the blood, kick the siren, and do some real work. He had been proud of that. But as soon as Longstreet got into the prasident’s office and the Kirks didn’t need him anymore, he found himself back in that ugly slump again. Then Hadrada got killed and he lost control.

Last friend in the world, he thought, more than once. But he deserved it. He deserved to lose Hadrada and everyone else. You’re a murderer. That’s you, the murderer.

It was strange to be back on the graveyard hours. They tasted of the Newstat eisenbahn station. Steel, and iron, and coal. That’s where he’d learned to lift wallets, seemed like a hundred years ago. That station in Newstat was on the edge of the Treaty Territories, where the lokomotives started their long trips west and south. Giantsblood came on those cars. Imported from the mines and penal camps in the New Territories, eisenbahn after eisenbahn came loaded with sweet liquid sunlight. The lokomotives going out were packed with settlers. Carpetbaggers and hucksters who couldn’t hack it in the city had to find settlement in the west. Even then, the Pen was already full to bursting and the city needed somewhere else to send its wayward sons.

Tyrsis never wanted to go west. He was a city elf down to his bones. He’d grown up in a twelve-elf shack under the Turning Bridge at the Silver City edge of Centrum. He didn’t really remember his childhood, save that his parents were weepy Aerans. He had one clear memory of his elder brother Angloss: rain was coming down from the bridge in an endless sluice. The cavern made by the span echoed with thunder and the fresh smell of ten thousand tiny streams pouring down its channel, washing clear the refuse and fertilizer of the Centrum valleys. Angloss threw his arm around Tyrsis’ shoulder and said, “Ye were named fer a king, long ago. A king of our people.”

“I thought only the Ae Virans had kings,” Tyrsis remembered himself saying. He had looked up into Angloss’ face. It was a fair face, framed by ringlets of brown hair. Handsome, in a boyish way, but at the mention of the hated Ae Virans, it twisted with a rage so deep and dark that it frightened Tyrsis.

It had frightened him then, and burned into his memory like a hot iron on a carving board. It never left him. “Oh aye, they think so. But a king isn’t a man who rules. It isn’t a man who kills! A king, a true Aeran king is given his place by pride of his people. But the time for kings is over. The republic is coming.”

“Will they let us have a republic, Angloss?”

“Just let them try to stop us.”

Tyrsis didn’t know what became of Angloss, or his other siblings. He had run away a few years later. He didn’t belong with them. He was coward, but he was tired of his mother’s beatings and his father’s dead-eyed stare. They said less and less until they said nothing at all, and all his raising was done by the other Aeran elves in the hovel. Angloss left to work at sea and send back his pay. Without his big brother, Tyrsis had no reason to stay.

He didn’t know what happened to Angloss, but he knew what became of the Aeran Republic. He’d read it in the papers. One hundred dead at Castle Craeg. Fifteen traitors hung at Hardcreek. Angloss was probably one of them. At least, Tyrsis thought, he’s in the ground of his home. The Ae Virans had that much mercy, to bury the Craeg rebels, the Aeran Volunteers they called themselves, in Aeran soil.

But Tyrsis wasn’t Aeran like Angloss was. He wasn’t born there, had never seen it, never felt any connection to that distant isle. Let the Ae Virans have it. They’d already had so much else, the whole world it seemed like. He was a Cinder City lad. His fortune would be made, or lost, in Cinder City and nowhere else.

It was at the Newstat Station that he had his first taste of giantsblood. He couldn’t think of that. If he thought about it, he’d want it, and he couldn’t want it. There was no way to get it in the Pen. Besides, he’d just come off it again after such a long sober streak. Maybe he could get his fingers round it again and stay dry. No one wanted to drink the blood, unless they were already drinking it, but once you stopped you got that evil creeping feeling in your bones. Like they missed it. Like it was an old friend. Just a drop, just a drop, just one flaming, burning droplet on your tongue, they whispered. They were liars. There was no such thing as just a drop.

The night librarian didn’t have the chance to ask anyone for blood, or siren, or anything else. Even nasvy and rolling paper was impossible to come by. The only other people in the library where the guards. Tyrsis’ job was to put the books, disordered by the progress of the day, back into their shelves; to shelve new books that may have been unloaded; to adjust records; to sweep the floor, fix shelves and clean the space between them; to process books ruined by age or moisture into shredded paper for use in other places throughout the Penitentiary. Of course, there was no time to teach him these skills, and barely enough time each evening for the day librarian, an ogre named Faisal, to explain them.

“We don’t need a night librarian,” the ogre complained, “but since the warden apparently insists you stay…”

It was Friday night. Late. The library was lit by a few brilliant globes. The hum of fulminating power crackled through exposed copper wires pinned to the ceiling. The narrow tower windows let in the blue darkness of the midnight hours.

The library had been a storage cellar. It had belonged to the chapel overhead. Charity Is Eternal never had the chance to preach in its completed walls; he died of syphilis before his dream, the castle-cathedral he’d spent so many hours sketching, was finished. The priests had used the dry, hexagonal cells to store vestments, prayer books, and extra lumber for repairing the fabric of the prison. Wood and cases of old penitentials still lurked in the dark corners, and an incongruous stairway near the back wall rose to a trapdoor in the chapel above.

Tyrsis was sweeping when he heard the guards step into the hall. Normally they sat on the inside of the door, slumped back, and snored with their heads against the wall, or else played cards on the registration table. Every guard made noise when they moved. They had keys, truncheons, clinking rings of chain, and those black leather boots polished to a high shine. Their belts, with their shoulder-straps, creaked. Their heels rang against metal and stone.

Trist heard them moving. Footsteps, leather, the scrape of the door. Tyrsis’ thoughts were sullen and slow. It took many moments for him to realize what he was hearing. His battered brain limped from sound to conclusion and all the while he pushed the broom.

Silence was element. He had grown in it. The walk from Centrum Hills to Newstat, though it was only a few kilometers away, was the work of some years for Tyrsis. When he ran, he was still only a kid; Centrum was fields and shacks. Newstat was the biggest settlement north of Regensburg back when the metropolis was still a welter of villages, towns, and cities. In the time since, of course, it had become one great stadt. But back then, you could go from Turning Bridge to Tramway Park without seeing a carriage, cart, or house.

Newstat was a port. Not a sea port; that belonged to Iron Island, Shipston, Alstat. Newstat was a new kind of shipping port: the beginning of the Territorial Eisenbahn. The lumbering iron behemoths ran from the Newstat Station all the way across the country by then. The New Territory Administration office was only a block away. When Tyrsis saw his first eisenbahn up close, before they were common all over the city, he was scared half to death. It was the size of an apartment block. It smelled like a furnace. It glowed with the evil light of the djinn in its engine-box, and a magician peered from the cabin with a cap pulled down over his eyes. He’d heard there were Aeran sorcerers on the NTA lokomotives and wanted to see one. He saw plenty, but none that were as soot-stained and free as the fellow leaning out of the cabin that first time he set foot in Newstat Station.

There, under the girders and glass, he learned to be quiet. To survive off of silence. It was more than an art, it was life itself. He was only, what? Ten? when he became a pick-pocket. The silence of your footsteps could be the difference between eating and spending four days in a festering cell. He learned not only his own silence, but the silence of others. Learned to sift through the channels of sound and find where they died out. You could glide between the shriek of the lokomotive and the call of the conductors like a river serpent. There were places under the roar of the coalbox and the shimmering presence of the imprisoned djinn that let a boy of a certain height walk undetected.

Sometimes you’d hear a different silence with yours. A silence near at hand, swallowing sound and gliding like a river snake between them meant there was someone else working the pocket grift and you should steer clear. Sometimes those other silences had a stink of menace in them. Those weren’t pick-pockets. They were more dangerous criminals: mobsters, assassins, child-killers. He knew every silence.

And now, there was a new silence in the library with him. It was the silence of someone else. The guards had left and now the silence of someone else was filling the hexacomb of stone. He kept pushing the broom. His ears tingled and his eyes itched. He wanted to turn, but he’d been followed by too many thief-catchers (Blues and private six-strings) to make that mistake. You never let the hunter know he’d been marked. You kept moving, and tried to manuever.

Artax, Fabricators, help me. I’m not well. I need the stuff. If I had just a swallow, I would hear whatever creeping killer was coming. I could save myself! But I’m slow. I’ve got the sickness, and I have to defend myself. He wondered if he could unscrew the long head of the broom and use the handle to defend himself. Don’t even need to unscrew it. Let’s wait. Keep sweeping. Wait and see.

The silence changed texture. There was a little groan. Not a person’s groan, but a hinge that hadn’t been oiled in a long time. The trap door. Someone was coming from the chapel above. And then, ah! the gentle sigh of feet in socks on the risers of the wooden stair. One by one. What would he have? A knife? A shiv cut from some harmless tool? A shard of glass? Or maybe he would have a garrot and pull on Tyrsis’ throat with the wire until his eyes bulged out of his face and his tongue poked swollen between his corpse lips.

Just as well. Didn’t he deserve it? Hadn’t he killed that kid and his mother? Wasn’t his last friend in the whole world dead? Hadrada, please, I didn’t mean it! But that didn’t matter. The Umwelt didn’t give a shit what you meant and neither did the Autothons. There was no heaven waiting for him. Live or die, he was damned to hell and torment. It was the inferno for poor Tyrsis Trist.

Things had been going good! All the scuttlebut for the Longstreet campaign, fighting against the Cavaliers and the stodgy corrupt Kirks, using every trick in the damn book, and now this—! Dead in a prison library at midnight, or past it, with the guards outside because someone had greased their hands. He wondered who it would be. Someone who knew the kid, maybe, or the mother. Someone paid by the family. Artax! He hoped the family had paid. Then they would get justice. No waiting for the slow turn of the Cinder City gears, just hot, bloody justice there in the dark. Trist lifeblood on the flagstones, like the giantsblood that had scarred his face and arms. Yes. Yes!

He was ready to die. Truly! He was. He wanted it. He begged for it. Then he felt the breath of the assassin between the shelves and that coward took over. It reached out from his coward’s heart and grabbed hold of his hands and feet.

There was a moment when the assailant didn’t know Tyrsis was aware, but was just within reach. It was then that the coward heart made Tyrsis strike. He flung himself flat and spun onto his back. Within a heartbeat, the assassin was on him. The man was hard as concrete. It wasn’t an amateur shiv he had in his hand, it was an honest-to-Artax steel knife with a killing blade.

The knife slashed. Tyrsis jerked the broom down. He pushed the killer’s hand aside: it nicked his leg, instead of killing him. Crack! He broke the broom, handle and all, on the assassin’s head. The man was unfazed, though a red spot in the shape of the handle was fast-appearing on his forehead.

The man with the mustache came at him again. This time, the knife swiped across his wounded forearms, where the flesh was tender and burned. Tyrsis let out a high-pitched howl. He planted his feet in the man’s belly. Tyrsis wasn’t strong, but he was driven now by sheer terror. His body was no longer his to control. It belonged to his coward heart. With one great heave, he threw his attacker off.

Giancarlo Messina, the fast draw, lunged again. Tyrsis only had the broken broom handle. His coward heart thrust it forward, his last defense. Oh this is the end, he thought helplessly. Giancarlo’s knife came flashing for his throat. Tyrsis saw the grave opening up to swallow him even though his limbs wouldn’t listen to his head. He watched in a detached mixture of horror and satisfaction as the assassin’s knife drew closer and closer. His arms thrust again, without his command.

The broken broom handle plunged into Messina’s neck. The assassin’s blade stopped short. His face changed to one uniform incarnadine hue as blood fountained into his prison-issue jumpsuit collar. The cotton soaked and soaked until it couldn’t hold anymore. Giancarlo stumbled backward and crashed into a bookshelf. Nails sprouted from the woodwork, spring-loaded, and the shelves came apart like a bad suit.

Fast Johnny tumbled under the weight. Blood pumped into the pages. Beat. Beat. Beat. Each breath Tyrsis drew was one less for Giancarlo. They were tied together by an umbilicus of fate. Beat. Beat. Beat. Giancarlo moved, faintly. His heel kicked a book. His mouth formed some Oenoetrian word. His eyes unfocused.

And then, just like that, clutching the broken bloody shaft, Tyrsis had killed three.

 

Dotti had real silk stockings. Her daddy had fought in the Sugar War, defending the trust and its incomes in those far-off islands. When he came home, he brought a present of silk to his little Dotti daughter. He called it “mybash,” but Dotti knew it was silk.

The Sugar Isles were not too far from the Dragon Empire, and it just so happened that Cinder City and NTA troops during the trust’s Sugar War had to stop at the Ae Viran garrison at Spice Harbor. Long time back, a century ago, the Ae Virans had taken Spice Harbor from the Leovins and then everyone on the Continent decided the Dragon Empire was theirs for the carving. When Dotti’s daddy fought in the Sugar War, there were three emperors. One was an Ae Viran puppet who signed decrees giving the Ae Viran crown whatever their ambassador asked for. Another was a bandit-emperor who claimed to be one of the Fabricators come to the Umwelt, which was curious because the people of the Dragon Empire didn’t generally believe in the Fabricators. The third was the heir of a long dynasty, raised to rule from the time he was a boy.

Dotti’s daddy stayed in Spice Harbor for months. He left when the cherry blossoms bloomed, on a steamship back to the NTA. That was before Dotti moved to the city. Spice Harbor was one of Ae Vira’s biggest colonial entrepots. It shipped clove, cinnamon, mace, nasvy, keluwak, pepper, turmeric, shallot, candlenut, coriander, tamarind, ginger, scallions, garlic; Ae Viran ships carried silk, poppy, sirensbloom, giantsblood, tea, porcelain, and homespun Dragon cloth. Spice Harbor exported their gaming tiles and their benevolent associations, too.

Ever since her daddy had come steaming into Shawnas town with a load of silk under one arm, a shoulder-belt, and a pistol on his hip, Dotti had worn real silk stockings. She’d left Shawnas behind along with daddy’s grave, and all the rest of her family. She was too young to remember the burning. That is, when she was just a girl she lived outside Shawnas in one of those rickety clapboard towns that housed black folk, orcs, and ogres in the New Territories.

Some of the high class orcs had lived downtown, in the big sandstone houses by the river, or on the waterfront. They mingled with elves, with white folk, with the planters, but they were always given the side-eye. Some even travelled all the way north. At first, it was by steamship, but later by eisenbahn. Those who went to the city were few and far between but there were Academy-trained mages in Shawnas, and they had to come from somewhere. Not all of them were white men; some were orcs, and others were black.

But after her daddy came back, there were a bunch of black folk, orcs, and ogres who had saved enough pay in the army or stolen enough from the sugar farmers beyond the sea that they could afford to gussy up their little ramshackle suburb. They painted their clapboard shacks, or tore them down. They bought bricks and hired masons to come and build new storefronts. That Sugar War money was humming through Shawnas. From the big houses to Mudside, Shawnas was burning with cash.

Mudside got itself a main street. It got a barber, an assembly hall, and a black Revelationist church. The Fabricators were looking out for Mudside. In three years, the entire district was changed. They even spread gravel on the sucking New Territory mud and took away the place’s name.

Then something happened. Mudside, Gravelside, whatever you wanted to call it, it was gone. Dotti remembered the barley and rye that ringed Shawnas burning. Sycamores screamed as fire mounted their crowns. Old Shawnas folk, who had been there before the Continentals or the Alkebulans ever came, watched from the brush as Mudside burned. It was a torch, a tinderbox, all soaked in kerosene. All it needed was the match. Smoke and soot, fire and death; Dotti’s daddy, who had his long-strummer from the war, was shot through and through. He lived to tell the tale, and even killed himself some of the rioters, those nose-turned-up folk, those shop-and-ball folk, those live-downtown folk. More than rioters, they were invaders.

The Old Shawnas knew. Once, a long time ago, it had been their towns put to the torch. Anyone who wanted to blow, who needed help to escape the burning of Mudside, the Shawnas spirited away into the wild. Dotti’s daddy refused to escape. He stayed. It wasn’t the burning that killed him. He lived on through that. It was malaria that got daddy, two years down the line.

That’s the long way of saying Dotti always wore silk stockings, when she could. They reminded her of her daddy, who was gone, and of her momma, whom she still wrote from time to time.

Now those fine silk stockings were all full of runs and holes. They were folded up on her chair, under the window, next to the partition she shared with the next girl over. Her name was Ethel. She was a whore, too. They all were, those girls in that building. They all worked alone, and they all worked for Uncle Niel Marcone.

Myrtle had insisted on walking her home. Dotti didn’t want or need her help. Yes, she’d scared off the Blue with her strummer, but now there was more trouble coming. What was she supposed to be…? Grateful? But then that strange Myrtle creature had slung her arm around her shoulder and said, “Where do you live? Where can I take you?”

She was convinced the woman was half-a-dyke. No one stared at her that way that didn’t want to fuck her. Dotti knew all about that, the icky part of people that wanted to reach out and put themselves in her. She’d known about it before the fire, even. Folks just couldn’t help it. They were snakes. They went on their bellies toward you, trying to get a pick up your skirt, trying to brush against your silk stockings. That’s why her trade was so good. Even the ones that didn’t want to hold you down, the ones that told themselves they would be nice to you, good for you, even they really didn’t know how to stay with you without hurting you. That was one of the dark nasty secrets of the world.

Everything was some kind of chain.

So when Myrtle wanted to know where she lived, Dotti mumbled through her bruised lips that she should go fuck herself instead. But the strange girl insisted. Said she’d stay with her, tend her. Dotti wanted to ask her what was in it for her, but she didn’t. She gave in. She told. Together they limped home.

The sun was coming up now, turning the channel to liquid gold. You could just see it if you stood at Dotti’s window and positioned your head right. It was something pure, like the rye fields at harvest or the hibiscus and iris patches by the roadside. The city didn’t have many pure things like that. Maybe nowhere did. Maybe Dotti thought they were pure because she’d been a child the last time she saw hibiscus. Either way, she saw the gleam of hammered gold from her bedside. Myrtle soaked her brow with a washcloth. Ethel was crying.

“Stop that bellyaching,” she said to Ethel. It was her grandmother’s voice that came out of her ragged throat; her grandmother’s battered words. Her head was throbbing.

“Shhh, shhh,” said Myrtle, sitting her back. The gold disappeared between smokestacks.

Alright, she does deserve something. “I can pay you,” Dotti started, but Myrtle shook her head and wrung the washcloth over the basin. When she came back, it was with a fresh batch of water. The beads left an icy path across Dotti’s bruise-puffed flesh. It felt clean, good. Even the smell of mold, ever-present in the apartment, yielded before it.

“What do you really want with me?”

Myrtle stopped. She was overhead, big as the moon. Her face was grim. “Not much, kid. To be your friend, is all. I saw someone I thought I could help.”

That drew a laugh out, bubbling from between bruised ribs. Dotti couldn’t help herself. Her wounds disagreed, and she buckled on the bed, arching her back not in passion but in agony. “You were pretty deep in your drinks, and you wanted to help me?” That was something. White bullshit, her daddy would call it.

Oh, Correis, help me be nice to this lady. She wants to help me. She’s trying. But there’s something wrong with her. Something underneath.

It wasn’t the drinking. Dotti knew a lot of girls who drank. It wasn’t even really the staring. She didn’t care one way or the other if this Myrtle wanted to fuck her. Most people she met wanted to fuck her. She was used to it. Not with the face this mope had given her, not for a few weeks at least, but she had enough cash socked away to make it by. There was something else about this white girl that rubbed her wrong. Something was off.

Still, while Dotti was still trying to get her legs under her, the white girl had strummed a point-blank, fancy-looking, guitar right at the fella who was doing the beating. That took balls. Even after the girl saw her john was a Blue. Didn’t stop her. Blam! Right there, right in his face, the sound so loud it was like being inside a thunderstorm. If something was off, there was something good about her too. Something that reminded Dotti of her daddy, pulling the lever of his big bass rifle, strumming those booming notes so low and sweet, teaching those shop-and-ball folks what it meant to cross a Freeman.

“Sorry,” she huffed. “Hard night.”

“It’s ok,” Myrtle said. Her voice was soft as eiderdown.

Other girls were gathering. She heard Fran’s voice in the background, and Ethel was now inching closer to the bed. “We should tell Uncle Niel, Dotti.”

Something changed in Myrtle’s stance, but Dotti was getting tired. She couldn’t focus her eyes. “Not now, Ethel.”

“But soon. He’s going to want to know.”

Dotti was slipping into sleep. Everything hurt. “Later.”

Myrtle’s downy tones floated above the tired darkness that was swallowing the world. “It’s O.K., Dotti. I’ll go.”

 

Dolora left Dotti Freeman in her apartment, tended by the other whores. They were nicer than she expected. Everyone treated her like a sister even though they’d never seen her before in their lives. In many ways, that building full of women was the magnetic opposite of a Bluebell Watch House. Several of the prostitutes had children with them. Dolora was torn between horror and delight as a boy who couldn’t be more than three tugged on her pants.

“Please, come,” he said.

She followed him, through the crowd of women in various stages of undress. It wasn’t just humans either; there were orc prostitues, elves, even a towering ogress. Dolora wondered what her johns were like. “I’m coming, I’m coming, stop tugging.”

He brought her into a communal kitchen, shared by everyone in the building. It was cramped with appliances. An upright gas toaster, a coal oven, a whole row of ice chests, and a locked breakfront of cheap booze took up an entire wall. Water dripped from the window where dew was collecting.

The boy turned out to be Fran’s son, Wilmer. Fran had made a pot of coffee, toast, bacon, eggs, and was busy cooking liver in a gobbet of chicken fat. “Sit, sit,” Fran clucked.

Ethel appeared from nowhere. “She’s asleep,” she announced.

They were both different from Dotti. That is to say, they were nothing like her. Dotti was serious, dark, intense. Ethel was flighty, gusty, like a curtain full of wind. Her s-curl was already frizzing back into its natural kink. Fran was white; her knuckles were white as her pale flesh as she clutched the frying pan. Neither seemed as old as Dotti, somehow. They were like kids. Dotti was no kid.

Walter sat beside Dolora at the table and kicked his feet. “You saved Miss Freeman.”

“Not saved, just helped,” Dolora said.

Ethel clucked. “Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t been there.”

“She would have fought him off.”

Dolora believed this. Dotti wasn’t the kind of person to let herself be abused that way. She would have fought off the Blue if Dolora hadn’t shown up. It would have taken more time, she would have been more badly hurt, but she would have won, eventually. Maybe it would have cost some dignity, or even a chipped tooth, but in the end the bastard would’ve gone down. Dolora had helped end the fight early, that’s all.

“How come that bad man hurt Miss Freeman?”

Fran hissed, like the grease in the pan. “Wilmer.”

“Oh, honey, he knows all about bad johns. Don’t think he doesn’t.” Ethel lit a bidi and shook her head. “Living around here, he has to. Don’t you, darling?”

“Is there…” Dolora pursed her lips. She wanted to capitalize on what she’d heard, what she’d learned. The name Uncle Niel was battering around her overtired skull. But, on the other hand… Dotti is in the other room sleeping off a royal beating. “Is there a doctor who does house calls nearby?”

“Already got him on the parley, honey,” Ethel said.

Wilmer grabbed his fork and knife and started playfully banging them on the table. Fran spat him into silence.

“She’s going to be alright, though,” Dolora said. It was a question, though it wasn’t phrased like one. She wasn’t certain who she was trying to reassure. Was it for the kid’s sake? Her own?

Ethel nodded. “She’ll be fine. Lots of girls’ve gotten it bad like that.”

Yeah, Dolora thought, the shadows crawling up out of that deep well of the past again, I know. She put the lid on it before they could spill into the light of day and take unpleasing shapes, shapes that might do harm in the here and now.

Fran finished cooking the liver and onions, which turned out to be delicious. Perked her right up, too.

The doctor came in the middle morning. He was all bustle and business. He didn’t open his bag to get anything scarier than a stethoscope. After a brief exam he pronounced nothing broken, then prescribed bed rest, and whatever siren or laudanum she needs to get her through the pain. The girls told him Dotti Freeman wouldn’t touch any of that shit. She’d rather take the pain head on, face it down like an lokomotive barreling on its track. The doctor shrugged and stumped his way back down to the front door.

Dotti woke again in the afternoon. Dolora didn’t know how to cook, but she could bring Fran’s cooking from the kitchen, so that’s what she did. There was plenty of milk, orange juice, and hearty ribsticking home cooking to be had. The other girls treated Dotti like a queen. They gave her bed the dignity of a fainting couch. Dolora wondered if Dotti was Marcone’s enforcer among her fellow prostitutes: the madame in this joint. Though there didn’t appear to be any formal arrangement, the air was certainly right. Dotti even sat like some ancient ruler or dignitary. She could have been painted on a church wall. She looked, in her convalescence, like one of those noble north Alkebulan queens explorers had found in the jungle, carved of solid onyx.

“It’s true,” Dotti proclaimed, “we have to talk to Uncle Niel.” She looked across the crowd of whore-courtiers to Dolora standing in the doorway, watched her bite into a piece of toast and swallow a mouthful of coffee.

The girls talked about who they should send. Dotti was wounded and in no condition to travel. She should recuperate on bed rest. If they had an autowagon, maybe it would have been a different story, but no one was going to call Uncle Niel to ask him to send one. Dolora said as little as she felt she could afford. Just enough to remind them that she was there, but not too much that they’d think she was angling for a meeting. This whole thing could work out in her favor, terrible as it was. If she got to talk to Uncle Niel she could position herself for a job with the bastard. It wasn’t every day one of his hookers was protected by a hired lutist from the streets.

In the end, they decided Ethel, Fran, and Dolora would go together. Dolora was shocked, thinking this meant they’d have to take Wilmer as well, but Fran simply asked one of the other girls to care for her son. Just like that, without even arguing, the boy was looked-after. He even had other little friends to play with just around his age. Dolora wondered if he’d grow up bent and broken inside, having been raised in a place like this. Well, who was she to judge, really? Ethel took a note from Dotti, all folded up on a little square of paper, to present to the boss.

It was noon by the time they set out.

“That was a good thing you done for Ms. Freeman,” said Fran as they crossed the street. “Not many people on the island who’d stick their neck out for a working girl like that.”

“Aw, din’tcha hear? Miss Myrtle here’s a big softie.” Ethel elbowed her in the ribs.

Dolora smiled. “Maybe I am. But I don’t go anywhere without a little instrument and my pick.” She twitched aside her cardigan to show the strummer in its holster. She was hoping to impress them, to show that she wasn’t some little demure miss from the other side of the channel. They laughed; not impressed, not like they’d never seen a strummer up close (after all, didn’t some of their johns carry ‘em?) but rather like they were appreciating a good joke. The joke, of course, was on the Blue who’d beaten Dotti. He’d think twice before he did that again, lest little Myrtle Mayhem step out of some alley and blast his head off.

They made their way toward the southern tip of the island. There, among the cramped worker’s tenements and southern docks, the fishing wharves and thick-bellied trawlers, was a little community of Oenotrian shops, apartments, and store fronts. It had its own Oenotrian banks, signs in the home language, and in many ways looked like Alstat on the peninsula. Fran and Ethel led them through the narrow streets toward their destination: a little restaurant called Carmine’s. It had a green-and-white-striped awning framed with copper piping, a plate glass window, and lettering done in gold giltwork.

Most of the community was actually owned by First Reliance Bank Ltd., as evidenced by the First Reliance office near the water. It was a fishing and loading village. Coke and giantsblood for the plant were offloaded at the docks and carted uphill to the dark behemoth overlooking Iron Island. Oeonotrian men, elves, dwarves, orcs, and ogres all dwelt in sweating, pressurized quarters with one another.

“What does everyone do for work around here?” Dolora asked.

Ethel led the way into the dark interior of the restaurant. “Fishermen and longshoremen, mostly,” she said as they passed through the coat room. There were only a handful of diners, all in worsted wool suits. An old Oenotrian man stood behind the countertop of the bar. He was diminutive, a tiny little thing with a mustache like a floor brush. As the three women entered he began to gabble in what Dolora assumed was Oenotrian.

It only took a few moments for Dolora to decide she liked Carmine’s. It was private, and quiet, and smelled of nasvy smoke and simmering vegetables. The tablecloths, crisp and white as they were, were soaked with something that smelled of onion, and olives, and secrets.

She glanced down at the gesticulating Oenotrian and whispered to Fran, “What does he want?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” the other woman replied.

The old man finally changed tongues to spout, “No whores! No whores!”

“We. Have. To. Speak. To. Uncle. Niel.” Fran said. Each word was bitten off with spite. “Dotti was hurt. Is hurt! Tell him. He will want to talk to us.”

The jabbering faded, and the man’s arms went limp. It was still another fifteen minutes of waiting at the bar before they were escorted upstairs, but eventually it was done. They passed a waiter leaning back in his chair, asleep, by the kitchen doors. The three women were conducted through a locked back room and took a flight of narrow stairs, switchbacking, to the floor above.

The apartments on top of Carmine’s were another world. The restaurant had a restrained, old-world air. It wouldn’t be out of place in some Continental city, slowly mouldering in the brilliant sunlight. Dolora had been to cafes and ristorantes like that. There hadn’t been too much time on leave, but some of it had been spent in southern Etoiller and northern Oenotria before the campaign shifted directly into Aon itself. She knew places like that. Maybe not like these old hands from the sun-soaked fields of the Continent, but she knew them.

She’d never been in a place like the apartments. First, a squad of orcs stood guard at the head of the stairs. The girls told her to turn over her strummer unprompted, so she was ready when they reached the top. She did as she had been instructed. The orcs, all in pinstrips, wearing fancy stick-pins, took her pistol from her. Slim was farther down the corridor, standing in a window that overlooked the street. He nodded as she walked along the carpet.

Her nerves were jangling. She hadn’t really realized her danger prior to walking in, and now she was in the center of the whole operation. She had no guitar on her, and no way out if things went south. The orc hired hands were young, but where they young enough? Was it possible no one here had any memory of Shamus Dolora Spade?

The halls were floored with perfectly interlacing wood of different hues. They made a geometric pattern, pulling the visitor inward like waiting arms. Dolora wondered if there wasn’t some spell in them. She could just imagine that fussy old Oenotrian downstairs complaining because some thug scuffed bootblack on the pattern. The walls were lined with sconces. These had fulminating power: glowing lightbulbs, as round and perfect as the orbiting planets, hid behind frosted glass. There were two parlies on the table by the window where Slim was standing. One had a pearl stick and golden cradle.

“We’re here to see the boss,” Dolora said.

Slim squinted at her. “Oh yeah?”

“It’s about Dotti,” Ethel said. “She got into it with a Blue.”

“She what?” Slim stood up, took a few steps toward them. “She’s ok?”

Dolora shook her head. “Banged up bad. She told us to come see the boss.” Stick to the line. That’s how it works. Don’t stray from the plan. You’re here to see Uncle Marcone. No one remembers a pissant shamus who got into everybody’s business years ago. No one remembers.

The slender, attractive tough jutted his chin toward a closed door. “You must be why Carmine came up here like his knickers were on fire. The boss is in there.”

“Does he want to see us?”

“Ladies, you wouldn’t be up here if he didn’t.” Slim shook his head and watched as the three of them filed into Aniello Marcone’s room.

The office was just as opulent as the rest of the suite. Three huge windows looked down over the street. Fancy chairs, hand-carved and upholstered, held a pair of strummer-men to overlook it. Enormous steel shutters on sliding rails were pressed against either wall. They looked like they could be closed in a moment’s notice. Dolora imagined them slamming into place, barricading them inside. No sun, no sky, no escape. Although that’s probably not what they were for. These are in case his rivals decide to take him down. Protect him from strummer-fire. There would be magic-laced wire in those shutters, too, to suck down spells and deflect them from the face of the building.

The boss, Uncle Niel, was a middle aged Oenotrian orc. He wore his hair slicked back from his forehead and, like Carmine down below, had a mustache. Niel Marcone’s mustache was thick and luxurious, expansive, almost as much of a feature of his face as his tusks were. He sat behind a conservative desk. A calculating machine crouched in the corner of the room, tablets of sums stacked on the floor nearby. There were were strummers of different types here than Dolora had seen since the war. Longspears, leviathans, even a fully-automatic godbotherer folded near the wall, it’s tripod deconstructed and waiting, dormant. There was so much fire power here it made Dolora shiver.

Aniello Marcone’s voice was husky and thick. “Some state boy hurt our Dotti,” he breathed. He smelled of cherry nasvy. His slender, aging body, was clad in a tight-fitting suit of worsted wool. He didn’t wear pinstripes or fancy cuts like the bravos and toughs he surrounded himself with. The restrained brown tweed made him look like a shopkeep. He wore an older pocket-watch with a silver chain strung through his button-hole. “Some Bluebell.” He said Bluebell with such contempt, it rattled Dolora’s frame.

Here he was. The dreaded Aniello Marcone, head of the Marcone crime family, in his seat of power. He was surrounded by orcs and bruiser-boys. There was probably a whole squad of ogres in the next room. The number of strummers in his offices, just casually laying around, indicated an unspeakable level of violence.

Dolora didn’t speak first. Normally, she’d have some smart-ass thing to say. As it was, her head was pulsing. She hadn’t slept enough. Her knee sent stabbing pains through her leg. Most of all, she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. Not yet. She didn’t know how this was going to go, and Uncle Niel had never seen her before—she hoped. She shouldn’t be the one to break the silence and offer her information. Ethel and Fran seemed to work for him. They should explain what had happened.

Uncle Niel offered them each a cigarette. Then, Fran said, “We didn’t get his name. Myrtle was the one who rescued her.”

“With that piece you turn over at the door?” Aniello’s eyebrows jumped when Fran said Myrtle, then he turned to look Dolora straight in the face. There was no flinching there. He searched her. His eyes pried and peered into every corner they could. “Dotti thanks you. I thank you. Heh.” The orc shook his head. “Myrtle. Handy with a strummer, yeah? Not afraid to shoot at a Blue?”

Dolora squared her jaw. “No. I’m not. I was in the war.”

“Well, well. The Blues supposed to belong to us. Bet you no know that.” He smiled. “Money buy everything, even watch captains, si? After all, why no? We are just humble businessmen looking out for our communities. You no agree?”

She hesitated. What was he getting at? His voice said he was amused, a mocking sort of sing-song tone floated beneath his words. His face, however, was as flat and icy as a lake in winter. “I, uh…”

He laughed. Ethel and Fran were looking at her, watching her for how she behaved with the boss. They seemed excited, crouched forward, hands on their knees or the arms of the chairs. “Myrtle lives not too far away.”

“Oh, she does, yes? An Iron Island girl?” Mr. Marcone’s eyes glittered.

Dolora swallowed a sudden cold lump of fear. After all, I am an Iron Island girl in a manner of speaking. I worked on the force here for… how long? She forced a smile. “Just recently.”

Uncle Niel nodded. “You no know who this Blue was?” he asked. Did his smile seem a little forced? Was he asking her if she was a Blue? Dolora nearly whimpered. The pressure was building inside her. It was too much for one person. She’d barely slept in over a day. She needed a drink, a couch, a coffee, a rest. But there was no rest for the wicked.

She shook her head.

“Well, I would stay out of Calabresi and Morello’s territory until we work this out. It might have been one of them gave the nod to this. They’ll regret it if they did.” He had a slight accent that Dolora had not heard when she first came in. It might have been her fear. Aniello’s words were almost perfectly formed, but the little Oenotrian lilt still coursed through them.

“Thank you, Uncle Niel,” Fran said. Ethel agreed, “Thank you, Uncle Niel.”

“Of course, girls. You know I take care of my own.” He pursed his lips. “Now, before you go…”

Oh Correis. This is it. He knows me. Dolora closed her eyes.

“I have some bad news to deliver. Just heard it on the parly myself. Johnny… he’s not coming home.” This time, Aniello audibly swallowed his h’s. The more emotional he was, the more the accent returned.

Dolora didn’t know who Johnny was, but it was clear Fran did. Her face, so stern and sharp, suddenly became frantic. Her eyes darted around the room. “What? Did he catch another charge?” Her body begged Uncle Niel to say no.

The Oenotrian orc looked at his desk. There was a long pause. It was time enough for Dolora herself to intuit the answer. It had nothing to do with more charges. “No, caro mia. It wasn’t a new charge. He took on some extra work without my say so.”

“Extra work? In the Pen?” Dolora’s heart hurt. Fran’s voice carried the rising tension of a string wound too-tight.

Uncle Niel nodded. “I didn’t know anything about it. But the job went bad. Tell little Wilmer I am sorry for me. We can bury him in a few days. You no have to stay in that place, if you no want. I can make arrangements.”

“No… I’ll stay with the girls. No arrangements.” Fran was crying. Dolora wanted to join her. She wiped carefully at the tears with the side of her hand, dabbing them. “Although we could use some repairs, maybe. The heaters—“

“No say no more. I will have them fixed. I’m sorry, Frannie.”

“It’s not your fault, Mr. Marcone.”

Aniello Marcone pursed his lips and folded his hands. “I bring him here from Oenotria.”

Dolora didn’t know the particulars, but she could fathom the shape of the story. Little Wilmer must be this Johnny’s boy. He was killed doing something he shouldn’t in the Pen. She wanted to reach out and put her arm around Fran’s shoulders, but that didn’t seem like something you did in a mobster’s iron-shuttered office. The strummer-men at the windows were all looking away, as though they had each independently found something incredible outside.

Dolora cleared her throat. “Thank you, Mister Marcone. If there’s anything else I can do…”

“Eh?” The orc looked up and squinted at her. “Anything else? What do you mean?”

“Just that, I’m looking for work.”

Marcone sighed. “Ms. Spade,” he said, and Dolora’s world began to wheel. Ms. Spade? Oh Correis, he does know it’s me! “You certainly have some cogliones to think you can walk in here after all that with McTavish. It was years ago, but I no forget so easy. Not so easy as some.” Fran and Ethel were staring at her. Fran’s tears were almost dry, forgotten in the surprise. “But you maybe do not know; I hated him more than anyone else on this little island. It was always something with him.

“Ah, for the ladies’, then,” he said, glancing to Ethel and Fran, “Ms. Spade and I have a little history. She used to wear blue, with the big brass buttons, no?” Dolora remembered. She remembered being young. Walking without a hitch in her step. This had been her last post, here in Orcland.

“I no understand why she call herself Myrtle as though I would forget. Yes, I saw you back then, Ms. Spade, in McTavish’s office. You were one of those vice Blues. Demoted from across the water, no? McTavish, he was a Member of Parliament from our ward. Always buzzing like little bee, asking for more and more and always more. You think a man like McTavish go to prison?

“They go to become bigwigs at consortia. He run Cinder City Consolidated Gas and Steam now. You know this? House on the little islands. What do you call them? The Tears. He be more than a ward boss when the day is over. And for what, did you run my boys in and bust up my joints, Ms. Spade? What was it again? He kill that little girl, no? We no kill little girls here. But McTavish, he don’t follow by our rules. He do whatever he want. That’s the way with you people. No rules! You do whatever you want, make money whatever way you want, no matter if it hurts little girls or old men or nothing. How do you say? Anything for a buck.”

Marguerite. She wasn’t a little girl. She had been… Dolora felt that dark well beneath her begin to open again. The past was crawling on hands and knees to strangle her, and she had no defense. She had walked into it.

“But maybe that’s why you’re back. Maybe that’s why you save Dotti, neh? You want to make good. Put right old wrongs. So, ok. Maybe I can use you. You do some things for me, I do some things for you. After all, I no like McTavish neither.”

Dolora wiped the sheen of sweat from her brow. Across from her, Aniello Marcone was smiling.

 

There had to be a connection between Tyrsis and Hadrada. Miles had been turned away at every door. No judge would sign an order, no friend would help get him in to see Trist. No matter. There were other ways to see how the two were related. A check in the city Hall of Records showed that Trist and Varnag didn’t live far apart, and both had been registered members of radical combines. They had also worked in the local Kirk office in Dwarfside.

Kirks and Cavaliers had been fighting for control of the city, passing it back and forth, since it was founded. The Cavaliers had mostly been on the losing end of things for the last hundred years. Although it was Cavalier sorcerers who had demanded freedom from Ae Vira and helped create the Closure, the Kirks had sprung up not long after. The Cavaliers were Aonic and stood for the “traditional values of the merchant-republic,” that is, tariffs. The Kirks had broken the Cavalier monopoly long ago with a platform of free worship and free markets, and freedom from the Continent.

Longstreet was an even more extreme Kirkist, one who had, until recently, been in a life-or-death struggle for control of his own party. Varnag and Trist, Tyrsis and Hadrada, had been some of the foot-soldiers in that war. Miles didn’t know yet just how they served, but he intended to find out.

He slept off the disappointment of his meeting with Wilder. In the morning he parleyed Dolora’s apartment only to find no one there to answer the connection. He forced the operator to let the damn thing ring for another five minutes before finally giving up. He refused to let himself worry. Dolora was a big girl, and could take care of herself. She didn’t need Miles Kowalski checking up on her like she was some toddler in short pants. If there was something wrong she’d find way to get word to him. And if not… well, it was just one morning. Chances were she was fine.

Miles sauntered into the Kirk party offices at eleven. That morning he’d taken a run for the first time in what seemed like a year. At first, it felt like he had sand in his joints—like ball-bearings that weren’t properly greased. As he pushed through, it went from draining to invigorating. His stride became longer, his arms moved more freely. Afterwards, he showered, shaved, and went down to the Kirks.

Their office was a little brick building on a corner. One story, flat white roof, Longstreet posters out front. “Revitalization” was the prasident’s watchword. Now that the elections were won, the offices were nearly empty. A year ago, during the election, the place had been bursting at the seams with breathless operatives. Miles remembered, because once they pushed him off the sidewalk, quite unintentionally, and he spilled his coffee all over the nice new tie he’d bought himself as a birthday present. It was no one’s fault but his, but the memory had stayed with him.

The place smelled of stale bread and drying typewriter ink. Miles ducked through the door (not designed for an orc of his stature) and looked around. Unlike his partner, Miles was a slow, methodical thinker. She liked to burst into places unannounced and holler, or pick the locks and creep. Miles didn’t do that. He thought it was probably because he was stupid. Stupid, but thorough. Dolora might see half a hundred things right off the bat that spoke to her. If she was in a firefight she’d instantly recognize the best cover. If it was an interview she would feel out the weak spots in the subject and hammer them like a pneumatic drill until they cracked. Miles didn’t work that way. He didn’t feel things instinctively.

He probed, and thought, and probed, and thought, and then thought. If Dolora was like a djinn, Miles was like a clock. No shortcuts for Mr. Kowalski, no sir. He had to grind through every option, to feel its weight and taste it in his mouth, before he could come to a proper conclusion.

The thing was, Dolora was usually right, but when she was wrong… it was disastrous. She could jump without looking and fall down a shaft three stories high. Not Miles. He didn’t commit until he was sure, but when he was sure he was never wrong. Miles Kowalski had never had to apologize for playing out a bad hunch. Not to Dolora Spade nor to anyone else. He just wasn’t the guts and hunches kind.

The interior of the Kirk offices looked like an abandoned florist’s. The few desks were littered with the dead and dying plants that had once thrived in an environment flourishing with life. Orchids drooped, unwatered, and shriveled brown ferns crowded their pots. A bank of typewriters sat in a silent catatonia. The only sound was the slow shuffle of paperwork from the far corner where a woman in a high-collared shirt sat beneath the globe of a lamp. This was raised above her by means of an articulated arm, giving it the appearance of a small sun.

Miles thought it was a sad sight, that the false sun couldn’t give enough light to bring back those pale and faded flowers. The woman didn’t look up from her work. She squinted through small, round lenses at the machine in front of her. Hen-peck fingers tapped the keys of the typewriter. It’s clack was loud enough to disguise his tread. Not wanting to startle her, Miles cleared his throat and walked to the desk.

“Excuse me, I was wondering if you could answer some questions.”

“Busy,” the woman said. Her hair was all piled up on her head, safely out of the way of the pounding arms as they hammered ink onto the page.

“I can see that. I was just wondering if I could have a look at the records.”

Miles, notoriously thorough as he was, had already spied them. The filing cabinets just behind this woman were undoubtedly where membership and payroll were kept. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to find right now, other than Hadrada Varnag’s name next to Tyrsis Trist’s on the books.

“No. Records are for internal use only.”

There were two ways Miles could approach this. The tried and true method, the one Dolora would use, was to simply present the private shamus license and hope the thing impressed enough to bluster by and get what he wanted. It was a very shoot-first strategy and if Dolora had been with him, he might even have backed her up on it. Orc muscle standing behind a firebrand shamus with a folded piece of paper that looked official tended to get things done. The problem was, if you didn’t get what you wanted, you’d strummed your last shot and would never get through that person to what you needed. They’d be burned.

The other option, the one Miles favored, was carefully explaining and exactly what you were looking for and then asking nicely. This is what he tried.

“I only ask because one of the people who used to work at this very office was murdered the other day and another is being held in the Pen. Now, I’m trying to find out what happened to Mr. Varnag and whether Mr. Trist being held has anything to do with it. It was a tragedy.” He could see the woman wasn’t much moved by this. He pressed on, changing tack. Invoke authority. “I’m a private shamus, ya see. My partner and I have been brought on by…” He paused. What was more likely to win sympathy here in a Kirk office? “The steelworkers combine,” he went on. Voters, good salt-of-the-earth strong Kirk voters. That was the ticket. That crotchety Krashnikol probably voted for Boss Harker. “And I think we’re close to figuring it all out, pinning the suspect. But I need to get into those files there to confirm some things. Mainly, that Trist and Varnag worked together.”

The woman was unimpressed. Her fingers hovered over her typewriter. “I knew them both,” she said quickly. She wants me gone. Well, if it convinces her to cooperate, who am I to argue? “They worked together putting up campaign flyers and doing other jobs for the party boss during the election. I think their combine, the one you claim to be working for, sent them.”

“They knew each other, then?”

She rolled her eyes. “Didn’t I just say?”

“Working together can mean a lot of things. Sorry, I just want to get the facts straight. Sometimes, little thing like this matter.”

“I’d say they were friends. They seemed comfortable around each other.”

“Thank you.” He tipped his hat.

There was no need for Miles to write anything down. He had an incredible memory. Always had. A head like a library, his was. Maybe he couldn’t just trust his guts to carry him wherever he was going to go, but he never forgot.

That was all he was likely to get. Another of Miles’ specialities: he knew not to push his luck. Again, Dolora was the exact opposite. She got one thing, she felt like she had to after another, and another, until the rope ran out and she found herself a hundred feet up over a crevasse with no way down. That wasn’t Miles. Once he had enough to go on, enough to move forward, he was content to put the lead down and go chase another one. The old thing would always be there, waiting, if he needed to come back. It was only a fool who would tug so hard they get bitten.

It was tantalizing. A little droplet of information, just enough to make Miles itch to get back at those closed doors he couldn’t find. He wanted to ask more, to push, but he knew better. He would have to approach this obliquely. The straight routes were barred. Like the magic of the Closure, which had bent the sea and kept Ae Vira far away. But like the Closure, there were still ways to get where he was going. There was always a way. Miles just had to find it. What was the equivalent of a ship, or a luftleighner when it came to Tyrsis Trist?

There was the Hall of Records. Voter registrations sometimes gave away more than people thought, and they were all public. Though he wanted to run down Trist’s daily life, see where the connections lay between the ice-wagon driver and the shop steward, there was more work that could be done on the papers first. Miles liked to have the papers in order before he went into a new situation. You could learn a lot about purchases and sales, registrations, arrests, newspaper articles, watch reports. Sometimes, they mislead you, but others you could get a picture of your man simply by following his trail through the public record. This chiaroscuro outline was incredibly useful. You could see the levers that would move people.

Why, if Miles had known her name in there, that woman at the typewriter, he might have been able to do just that. Find out her likes, wants, recent land purchase history. All of those things helped when you went into an interview. So, before he went and horned in on Dolora’s territory (after all, she was living on Iron Island now), he decided he had to make his way to the Hall.

The city archive was downtown. Like every other building of importance, it was located off the bay in Silver City. He was irritated he hadn’t thought of it yesterday. Taking the long trolley-and-streetwagon line two days in a row was a waste of time and money. He liked to keep his visits to downtown consolidated, do everything he had to do in one afternoon, and then come home.

But the day was clear, and warm, and Miles found a seat that was mostly in the sun. He took of hiss hat, luxuriated in the smells of the warm streetwagon bench, the wood and lacquer radiating a comforting scent in the heat.

A breeze was coming in from the south, off the ocean, sweeping in past Luftfield Island, Iron Island, Parliament Island; it came from the open waters. As it traveled it picked up color and air from the boats and shipping liners chugging through the channels. At Shipston it blew up through the drydocks where the laborers were making some huge commercial yachts seaworthy again. It swept up their blistering curses as they hammered, sawed, and tarred, and carried them up over the rooftops, then down the narrow Alstat streets.

As the streetwagon left Alstat behind, the rails rose out of the street and onto their own track. It barreled by Shipston and the southern stretch of Centrum Hills. Stations came and went; old women with groceries in crinkling bags, children with their mothers or fathers, men in flat caps and women in stockings all changed stations here and there along the line.

Miles found himself thinking about children when he got off the streetwagon three changes later, its tracks once again joined with the street surface, in front of the Hall of Records. He’d always liked them. This was not a common feeling among the shamus community. Oh, sure, plenty of Blues had families, but there was something about being a shamus that seemed to preclude it. Not that Miles had any to speak of, or any prospects. But he’d always liked them. Being near them made him chuckle. Even when they were upset, there was something sweet about it; their anger, their sadness, these were pure, unadulterated emotions. They had access to a well of feelings prior and before they were caught up and tainted by the world. Miles figured that adults felt things the same way that breeze off the ocean picked up the smells and colors of the harbor and the islands. For children, it was like being over the open ocean.

He went through the vast beaux-arts bulk of the Hall of Records almost automatically. This was the place most private shamuses started their search. To be a private shamus, in Miles’ mind, meant becoming familiar with the record. People didn’t realize how much of a wake they left behind them. When he was on the watch, none of his fellow-shamuses ever gave a shit about the paper trail. They were like Dolora and went with their gut, or else dragged witnesses in and beat the snot out of them until they gave up what they knew. A private shamus didn’t have the power to hold people. There were no laws that would let Miles get a warrant to detain, and certainly none that would let him investigate in that… particular manner. Not that it was legal when the Blues did it, but who would stop them?

As for the vast paper wake… Well, once you left the watch you had to find better ways of getting information. People were followed by a snow-cloud of paperwork. Once, there had been no need to register anything, and minimal need for recording. These days, hackneys, carriages, and autowagons all required licensure. If you wanted to drive an autowagon, you also had to apply for a license from the city. Anyone building anything, voting anywhere, all left behind paper. Arrests, too, made paper. There was the new science of fingerprinting; more paper.

The trick was, the less influence and money someone had, the less likely they were to have a trail. Renting an apartment and paying your way on the streetwagons didn’t make a ripple. Still, there was the chance… and Trist must have an autowagon license, anyway, unless he was operating without out. Which, given the way he’d ended that particular career, Miles had to admit, was possible.

He cleared his throat and wound through the granite-tiled lobby. City clerks and attorneys brushed by in their fancy suits. Miles let them. Functionaries felt like this space, public though it was, belong ed to them because members of the mob rarely came to trouble them. His face was known by the janitors and staff. Still, the clerical workers coming and going give him dirty looks. They saw him as below, subaltern, other, in his worsted wool and street demeanor. His cigar was uncouth, phallic, unlike their little bidis. He was an intrusion into the world of respectable men and women. And of course, there was also the color of his skin. Like an Alkebulan, an orc could never divorce himself from his physical presence, no matter how much he hunched.

The stacks themselves were cavernous. The Records clerks didn’t normally let anyone go from drawer to drawer on their own. Technically, you were supposed to wait at the counter in the front of the building. This was long as an eisenbahn station queu. It stretched from side to side of the huge Records Hall. Behind it, man-height rows of filing cabinets disappeared into the iron-and-glass wilderness of the building in uncountable rows and islands. The whole building, however, was meant as a testament to the power of the Cinder City government. It wasn’t dark, or moldy, like it might have been if it were built in Alstat.

No, instead, the Hall of Records main room was an enormous semi-circular roof of glass panes and iron gridwork. The glass was tempered and treated, so the sun never fell in blinding shafts, but illuminated the sheets from behind with a warm glow. This roof was set on a high open structure of New Territories granite, the blocks cut taller than Miles to a side.

Unlike the clerks from Parliament Island or the functionaries from the Juridicium, Miles didn’t have to wait for the records agents to find what he requested. That would take forever: ask for a license, wait an hour, review it, and then need to follow up on ten new documents the license itself raised? Days waisted just in waiting! No, the way to do it was to earn the trust of the clerical staff, and then bribe them.

Now, Miles slid to the end of a line of suits waiting for the clerks, rapped on the polished woodwork, and passed a ten dollar bill across. The man on the other side, a dumpy old elf called Clannaeg, took the bill and grinned at him. “Come right across, Mr. Kowalski,” he murmured, his voice doubly loud in the cathedral-silence.

The place to begin was the voter registry. When people registered to vote, they left a trail; it plunked down their address right there. He could find Tyrsis Trist’s apartment lickety-split. The trick was knowing which wards to check. His plan was to start with the 3^rd Ward where Hadrada also lived and spiral out from there. Turned out there was no need: Trist’s latest registration on the Kirk voting rolls was only two blocks from Varnag, and three from the dwarf’s beau… What was her name? Ovirov. Varda. Damn Dvarnag names are like a mine field.

Once he had the address, he pulled everything else he could. Driver’s license, every registration and public health document Tyrsis Trist had for the last five years. The boy’s a giantsblood addict, but he’d been clean for nearly a year when Hadrada died. Then all of a sudden, he tops himself off and plows into a street lamp? Doesn’t seem likely. He knows something. Miles looked up from the file and into the middle distance. His eyes were unfocused. He’s afraid. The kid wasn’t being kept in the Pen for his protection from a crowd. That was some bunk the watch was throwing around to explain why he was so quickly clapped in irons and spirited away into solitary confinement. The kid is gonna get the axe while he’s in the Pen.

The warnings flashed like lightning so bright that Miles almost didn’t realize someone was standing behind the records counter staring at him. Almost. When you were a shamus long enough, you learned to be alert to observation. Long years of experience gave you a feeling for when someone was looking at you unseen. Damn, he thought, it’s a tail. He didn’t get a good look at the guy, just saw a shadow duck into the front hall. Well, there’s more than one way out of here.

With a quick word to Clannaeg, Miles shoved copies of the records he wanted into his jacket and hoofed it out the service entrance in the back. There was no sign of the mysterious visitor in the alley, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t under observation.

There were essentially two kinds of tailing operations: pro and amateur. It didn’t matter how many people you had with you if you were an amateur. All amateur tails made the same basic mistakes. So far, this guy stank of amateurism. He’d immediately skipped out of sight when Miles caught him, which was like tailing one-oh-one. You didn’t want to look guilty, like you were doing something wrong. That sudden start, the burst of animated movement, or the quick slip into the shadows like Miles’ buddy had done was a surefire way to get made. If you looked down at something, or pretended like you were just glancing in your mark’s direction, you might go on unnoticed or dismissed as simply another face in the crowd. Easy enough to think of, but hard to do.

Miles had been the shadow before. He knew how your heart pounded, your palms began to sweat, and your whole body revolted against remaining calm. But that was what you had to do. In shadowing, being clam and looking calm were key.

He decided to avoid the streetwagon in front of the building altogether and go for another stop. The C line was not too far away, at Government Circle, so he hoofed it there. On the way he realized he didn’t have a good look at his tail, which meant he could have picked him up again. When being followed, there were a handful of tried-and-true tricks to get a look at your tail. Luckily, downtown had no shortage of enormous glass windows. He stopped in front of an upscale eatery and pretended to browse the lunch menu. No shadow loomed behind him. He stopped at a parked autowagon and investigated the side-view mirror while he pretended to check his watch. Ahhh, there he was. At the corner on the opposite side of the street. Big bulky coat, little frame, slouch hat pulled down, brown band stained by the weather.

Miles could at least put him through his paces. Who is he though? He adjusted the mirror to get a better look and the figure vanished into the crowd. Maybe not an amateur after all. He thought for a minute. He was a big target. He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just that he was an orc, he was a particularly heavy one. Miles pulled out his wallet. Just enough for a cab to the station. He didn’t need to hit the C line, he could double back to A in front of the Hall of Records. That might throw his tail for a loop.

He held out his hand, chuckling a little at the poor bastard who was about to be left in the dust. It took a few long minutes for a taximeter to pull up. Miles knew it would—Orcs in Silver City didn’t easily get rides in a cabriolet. Still, he stuffed himself in and asked to hit the A line station at the Hall of Records and the cabby clucked his tongue and took off. It screeched a U-turn and the man in the hat disappeared into the distance.

Miles was half-way back to Alstat when he saw the tail again. He’d changed trolleys twice, and was now coasting the old Alstat D line. The papers he lifted from Records crinkled uncomfortably in his jacket. Hope the ink doesn’t run. He had a vision of his sweat soaking through them and rendering them illegible. It was while he was checking to make sure the pilfered records were all in order that he saw the slouch hat in the next car over. He narrowed his eyes. Same stains, he realized, and then his heart went cold.

Either his tail had incredible luck, or there had been a network of watchers. Or he knows where I’m going. Whatever the reason, something was terribly wrong. I’ve landed myself in something serious. How long had he been followed before he noticed? He could have picked up the tail back at the Commissioner’s office for all he knew. Fabricators, it could have been going on for days. Maybe the city had dispatched its goons way back when Dolora got that visit from the Juridicium attorney. We’ve been noticed. Not that we were being subtle. Open visits to the Penitentiary, the Commissioner’s office…

There was a pretty long list of people who might be watching. It started with the Juridicium, but didn’t end there. The Judges would have sent state agents, though. They’d be everywhere. Miles scanned the car for anyone else that might be working with his shadow. He recognized no one. That didn’t mean they weren’t there; after all, the mope had managed to pick him up again on the trolly. There was also the commonists. If this really were a commonist plot, they might have sent this tail to find him. If so, the guy could be right from Dvangar with his CoG knife and pistol tucked into his shirt. Then, there was the Stadtprasident. Maybe he was the Kirk’s man. That would accord with the general theme the investigation was taking. The Kirks, trying to cover something up - or else someone who worked with them on Longstreet’s campaign.

Miles wasn’t prone to the kind of conspiratorial thinking that would let him accept a Kirk as Hadrada’s killer, even through an agent. It was much more likely that, while they worked for the Kirk office, Tyrsis and Hadrada had gotten up to something illegal. Maybe this guy was even sent by one of the city’s gangs, or some member of their own illicit scheme gone wrong.

It didn’t really matter who he was. Not yet. First, Miles had to get the drop on him. There was no way he was leading this mope back to the his apartment and staying under observation who-knew-how-long.

He cracked his knuckles. However long this had been going on for, it stopped now. He adjusted the stolen (borrowed) paperwork to make sure it sat safely in his coat, then laid out his plan step by step. In typical Miles Kowalski fashion he thought everything through before he stood up.

The streetwagon slowed as it approached Tensen Station in Shipston. He stood, and saw his shadow rustle the newspaper he was pretending to read. Leather driving gloves, Miles noted. The shadow was at the end of the trolly, getting ready to hop to his feet.

The wagon stopped and Miles hopped out. Without warning, he jogged for the iron stairs that led back down to the street. He heard his shadow grunt and give chase. Hustling his way across the road beneath the elevated tracks, Miles then climbed back up to the other side of the platform. The next streewagon was already approaching, but it wasn’t the one he wanted; another D line that would take him back downtown. He wanted the E wagon, which would be next, and veer north toward Centrum.

The next hour was a blistering whirl of switching lines, moving inexorably northward, and watching for his shadow. Even the calm minutes spent riding the streetwagons were filled with tension. What if he tries something? What if he’s just one and there are five or ten waiting for me at the next stop? But the mope never tried anything, and no goon squad emerged from the placid Centrum streets to jump him.

In his mind, as they went, he ran over and over the grassy lanes and parklands of Woodland. Woodland was north of the hills, on the eastern side of the Peninsula facing the sea. It jutted out of Centrum, forming the northern arm of a bay, on the other side of which were Regensburg and Reise Landing, both bastions of old money. The whole eastern half of the city was the playground of the rich, while the poor and working folk crowded into the stinking highrises of the west and south.

At Woodland Park Station, Miles got off and started jogging, just like he was going on a run. Never mind the suit or the paperwork. He needed to put some distance between himself and the shadow. He turned at once into the Park, between a pair of brownstones, and jogged under the first foot bridge he came to. This was the one he’d beeen imagining: a bulky thing with thick stanchions made of sandstone, placed here in honor of the Slave War.

He panted and wiped at his brow as he rounded the stanchion and flattened himself against it, hidden beyond. Here he comes. The shadow’s feet clapping gravel was an avalanche.

One good swing. A lunge. We got this turned around.

The shadow would be confused, tired, and irritated. He’d been following Miles for the better part of two hours now, and Miles hadn’t made it easy on him. Lots of dashing, changing lines, even a taximeter ride. By now, he should be totally unprepared for the dish Miles was about to serve.

The coat and hat almost plowed right by him. Miles hurtled forward, throwing his entire weight into the tackle. As he lunged, he swung his clobbering fist. He’d been in more fights than he wanted when he was a younger man, and he knew how to swing. You don’t stop when you hit flesh; that’s just the beginning. When you hit someone, you try to go through them.

The shadow fell, and they tangled in his long coat. Miles battered him again and again as the dull sensation of pain throbbed up through his hand. That was normal. Beating someone in their face and ribs often did a number on your own fingers. Part of the price of the fight, as Miles figured it.

Now the guy was fighting back, punching, grunting, shifting left to right like a turtle on its back. Miles grunted as a foot connected with his shin; the blow was like being hit by a bat. Then, a fist crashed into his jaw and sent him spiraling into the brush. He felt like he’d collided with a lokomotive at full speed.

They both struggled to rise. The tail’s coat was torn open, his pants ripped, and one of his gloves shredded to ribbons. Miles gaped, rubbing his jaw. The mope’s face was slack with the haggard, stubbled look of an ersatzmann and the left side of his body told the same story. Gleaming steel plates shone beneath the ruined suit and trencher. His whole left arm must be pistons and wire. The might of the trapped djinn crackled through the copper. No wonder it hurt so much. Miles checked to make sure his jaw wasn’t broken.

The tail, having been made, hesitated. Miles drew his strummer. There was no wrestling with an ersatz like this. He could rip Miles’ head off if he wanted. The barrel of the big Atla Warbow wavered. The shadow made up his mind, began to back away, hands raised.

“Where you going, mac?” Miles growled.

His shadow turned and ran. Exhausted, Miles flopped on the dirt.

“Fuck.”

 

After a long day of working with the Marcone mob, the only thing Dolora could think of was getting back to Dwarfside and having a shower. Her week-to-week rent was due again in Orcland and she wasn’t going to pay. Why bother keeping an expensive apartment now that she was on the in? Besides, they apparently knew who she was. Sure, Dotti had turned cold as ice when she got back, but who was Dotti Freeman to snub her? After all, she’d saved Dotti’s life. Trust a whore to be ungrateful. But that didn’t seem fair. Did it? She locked Dotti. Didn’t she? It was so hard to sort her feelings for the woman out. She was alluring, like something forbidden. Hell, she was forbidden! Did you forget so soon about Kit? Faithless bitch, is what you are.

Figures that Marcone would use her as a fucking longshoreman. All day, all she’d done was ride shotgun in a rickety cabriolet loaded to the gills with siren and giantsblood. The spring sun beat down on her, the stinking ocean winds whipped up and occasionally cooled her steaming armpits, blowing the sweet tang of stale sweat around the cab’s bed. She’d been tossed a scatter-strummer for protection and given half a dozen cartridges. She didn’t like buckshot strummers, but she’d cradled it close.

She’d seen them at work in the war. Cinder City was the only country that sent them with their troops. “Trenchcleaners,” they called ‘em. Any New Territories soldier captured with one was executed on the spot by the Aons.

“You won’t need it,” the driver said, “but it looks good.”

There had been a tension in the air all day. Wherever they stopped and unloaded, whenever they were picking up a collection, the driver and his two goons kept their eyes peeled. Dolora could tell they’d been hit before. This wasn’t your regular “look out for Blues” watch, either. This was a mob war. Marcone, Calabresi, and Moreno were competing for dominance of Orcland, and it wasn’t out of the question for one of them to attack Marcone’s boys.

How did I get myself into a mob war?

But no one bushwhacked them. Dolora did her duty. She even checked in on Dotti in the middle of the day, for all the good that did. The driver had laughed at her when she came out. “Whatsamatta? Your beau didn’t give ya a kiss?”

Now, she was tired as all hell, and wanted to sleep in her own bed for the night. It would be a pleasure to get out of that Orcland rathole. The roaches were better behaved, for one thing.

She just managed the last ferry, which crawled and limped across the channel. Alstat was a blessing to her weary eyes. She could feel it suffusing her as she stepped onto the docks. The stink of salt-fish and streetwagon grease rolled across her. Her coat and shirt were slung over one arm, leaving her in her drenched undershirt.

A few bits to hop a streetwagon and she was off, gliding uphill toward her apartment. She would have to parly Miles in the morning and they’d put their heads together. She was now, she knew, deep in the shit. Marcone knows me. He could turn me over to the Watch… but he won’t, because he has his own problems with them. She knew where that led. He was going to use her services as a shamus now that she’d proved her loyalty. He wants to know which of his enemies are lining which pockets, and how deep those pockets go. The attack on Dotti was a warning to Marcone personally. Calabresi or Moreno, a Benevolent Association, maybe even Moishe Edelson from Alstat, all were possibilities. Maybe it was some new power in Orcland, one who had yet to make themselves felt.

Whoever it was, Marcone wanted to know, and he wanted to know bad. She could understand that. His life might depend on it.

The streetwagon lurched. She jerked to one side, and the thoughts of Marcone and his troubles flew the coop. “What the—?” There were only a few others onboard: a sleepy Orthodox Filic dwarf, two orcs from the Dragon Empire peering up ahead, and the driver in the front. Every board of the wagon smashed together. It felt to Dolora like it leaped up from the track and slammed back down before coming to a complete stop.

She stood.

There were people on the tracks. A small crowd surrounded the front end of the wagon. They were ugly sons of bitches, in heavy work clothes, some with flat caps, others with pipes, wrenches, or autowagon irons. They didn’t seem angry, but they were certainly determined. One climbed onto the streetwagon’s cast-iron stair and leaned into the compartment. Dolora didn’t wait. She had no reason to think these people were after her, but she wasn’t sticking around to find out. With three steps, she swallowed the space between her seat and the back stair. She was out on the street before anyone said anything.

And bam! just like that she ran face first into an ironworker with a hammer the size of an oar. Her mouth made an “oh” shape but no sound came out. Striking him was like running face first into a brick wall. Before she could pull her strummer, hands were around her arms and shoulders and she was being hauled across the street. Someone waved a cap at the wagon. It sounded its bell three times, then started off with a shudder.

Dolora was dragged, heels scraping, for a few blocks. The toughs pulled her through and alley. She squirmed and kicked the whole time. She must have connected with a chin, because to her satisfaction she saw a mope pull back with a bloody mouth before she was thrown through a steel door and into the dark. This is the end, she thought, whatever mob is after Marcone has me.

The clang of the heavy door slamming had a finality to it. Final as the grave. She shivered, suddenly cold. Wherever she was, it felt like a freezer. Her undershirt clung to her arms. The jacket and other accoutrement had been left behind in the street as she was being lifted away. Now, without the sultry heat of the Alstat night air, she felt bare and exposed. The darkness didn’t hide her. It wasn’t a safe darkness. Rather, it made her feel open, stripped, naked. Without warning she had become all soft flesh. The shadowy room around her was filled with the pricking of imagined needles.

There was a sizzle as a switch was flipped and copper wires filled with fulminating power. A globe overhead flashed to life. The hum was like half a hundred grasshoppers in the tall grass.

Dolora was shocked out of words. Not by the surroundings; those were fairly mundane. She was in an ice room in the back of what must be a restaurant. She didn’t have a chance to get a good look at where they were before the trolly stopped, so she couldn’t guess at what backroom establishment she was in. The joints of meat were the kind that needed long boiling to be palatable, so it wasn’t anywhere fancy. Couldn’t be, in fact. This was Alstat!

No, it wasn’t that. It was the presence of the dumpy O, with her green visor and her thick fingers. She stood in the kitchen door, framed on either side by two dwarves who had to be her bodyguards. “You won’t be needing your weapon,” she said, though Dolora hadn’t even shifted to put her strummer near at hand.

O came into the room.

“We were concerned.”

Dolora stared.

“We heard you were working with the Orcland criminal underworld.”

She tried not to let her jaw drop. You what? she wanted to ask, but she wouldn’t give this commonist the satisfaction.

“I thought you were after Hadrada’s killers.”

“We are!” she managed to croak. “With no help from you!” Now that the cork was out of the bottle, the djinn poured free. “Who do you think you are, mugging me in plain sight in the middle of the street like that?”

O took a few more steps forward. “Mugging you? We’re looking after you, girlchik. We’re trying to help you. But you tie my hands when you join forces with those… people.”

“I thought commonists were supposed to be for the working man.”

“The…” O sighed. “Please. You don’t even—do you know what commonism is?” For the first time, O’s voice changed tone. She was frustrated! Dolora couldn’t believe it. This stodgy woman with a frame like a tractor was frustrated with her!

She sneered back. “Yeah. It’s where everyone lives in one big tenement building and nothing works.”

“Tscha! You wear your ignorance like a badge! I wanted to warn you that you’re getting in over your head. You don’t understand the forces you’re dealing with. If you don’t do something about that soon, you’ll wind up like Mr. Varnag.”

Now it was Dolora’s turn to feel anger course through her. “So help me. Help me understand! What was it? Was it something about commonism? Did one of your people kill him? That’s what the Juridicium thinks!”

“I’ve answered this question before, Ms. Spade. No commonist killed Hadrada Varnag. What is it that you hope to gain from the Marcone mob?”

“Information. Admission to the Dragon Benevolent Association! What difference does it make?”

O sighed. “Be careful, Ms. Spade.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

But the commonist liaison was already leaving. The dwarves went with her. It took a long time for Dolora to realize the outside door wasn’t locked, and she could leave whenever she wanted to.

 

Iron Island was Dolora’s territory. Miles had plenty of other places to be, but something drew him there. If Tyrsis Trist knew Hadrada Varnag, maybe he’d been seen at the foundry where Hadrada worked. He’d taken a nap and made sure there were no lurking ersatzmenn to follow him. Still, he took the back way out. His whole body hurt from the fight, but it would hurt more in the morning. He hadn’t been in a tussle like that in ages. Those ersatzmenn sure had power. They might look like walking corpses, might be infested with dark spirits and evil djinn, but just a few strikes from one of those glistening limbs was enough to put an orc in the hospital.

Krashnikol’s Hammers was still running when he got there, despite the fact that it was well past sundown. He checked his watch; it wouldn’t do to get stuck on Iron Island. If he was later than the last ferry, he’d have to find some little pilotship to take him across. He turned up his collar and went for the manufactory.

The iron foundry shone like the mouth of hell itself. The machines were at work now. The diamond panes threw a crimson glare over the lot and the street, while the very ground trembled with the pounding of the press hammers.

He sighed. I wish I’d brought something to drink. He didn’t often drink, not like Dolora, but from time to time it helped do the job. His ribs were sore and his back felt like someone had used it as a drumset. He passed a Blue autowagon at rest on the curb. He gave it no more attention than he’d give any other truck or transport, save to peer into the cab and ensure the Blue patrolman who drove it wasn’t still inside. With this confirmed, he ducked into the shadow of the thunderous foundry.

There were a few loaders out by the dock where autotrucks pulled up to take the iron pressed in the foundry. Their autotruck was idling to one side, all spokes and wheels, its bed only half-loaded.

“Hey there, fellas. You haven’t seen Lee Finster around, have you?”

One flicked his bidi to the pavement. “He’s not in right now.” Laughs. “Have ya got a calling card?” More laughs.

“I got something better.” Miles peeled two fives from his pocket. “Or I could leave a card.”

One of the loaders moved to grab the cash. Miles pulled it back. Being an enormous orc had its advantages. No one dared try to take it. “First, I want to talk about Tyrsis Trist or Hadrada Varnag.”

The loaders exchanged glances. They were ready to come around, Miles could see it, but something happened to their faces. They closed up. Another lit a bidi and backed to the concrete dock. “Oh, nobody wants a five?” Miles made his eyebrows jump dramatically.

A voice behind him at about shoulder level intoned, “I think they’re smarter’n that.”

Miles turned. A Bluebell Watchman in a double breasted uniform with brass buttons and a patrolman’s cap was lurking right at his elbow.

“I’m not breaking any laws, am I, officer?” Miles meant the words to be a de-escalation, but with the wear on his mind and the tension in his jaw, they came out as a threat. He winced at the sound of his own voice. Being an enormous orc has its disadvantages, too.

The rangy Bluebell sucked in his breath. He was a middle-aged man with a sergeant’s stars on his epaulets. His badge, stuck on his breast, agreed. “Loitering,” the sergeant began. This was one of the perennial charges a watch officer could level on just about anyone. Miles knew another, and it was coming. “Trespassing on private property.”

“Now, I haven’t been warned not to come here,” Miles said.

The sergeant stabbed him in the chest with a finger. “I’m warning you right now. Beat it, mister.”

If I had a cigar, I’d blow the smoke right into this dope’s face. He leaned down to read the name on the badge. “Sergeant… Krasky. I’m here as a private shamus. I have the authority.”

The rangy Krasky wrinkled his ugly nose and gripped his beating-stick. “Backtalking an officer of the law? We’ll see about that.”

Miles sighed. He could hear the shuffle of the teamsters as they moved away from him. Am I made for this? What is it, my size? People are scared, so they fight? He grunted. They’re fools. “You don’t want to do this, sergeant,” he warned. “I’ve had a long day.”

Krasky put his hand on his billy club. Miles clamped his own mitt around it so the officer couldn’t remove it from his belt. The watchman squealed in annoyance and swung at Miles’ side. On any other day, the blow wouldn’t have hurt. Miles would’ve barely felt it. Today, he groaned, because this damn Watchdog was punching him where he’d already been struck by an ersatz fist. Now the Blue was reaching for his strummer, his fingers unbuttoning the cover of the leather holster.

Miles ripped the pistol away and, in a single twist, he pulled the slide from the weapon and threw it away. It clattered on the asphalt. “Sergeant,” Miles warned. This Krasky chopped at Miles’ forearm then kicked at his shin. He ripped free. “Sergeant!” Miles shouted. Krasky whipped out his truncheon and clubbed him on the shoulder.

The loaders were gone. Miles staggered back and whipped his fist around. “You don’t,” wham, “have,” wham, “to do this.” He punctuated his words with blows to the head. The sergeant tried to cover his temples, but only succeeded in falling back against the truck.

Krasky’s eyes were crazed. He threw himself at Miles, straining against the orc’s muscles. As he did, he jammed his silver watch whistle between his teeth and blew. The piercing shriek of the officer’s warning turned the darkened street into a wind tunnel.

“Ah, shit,” Miles groaned. He reversed the pistol he’d taken from the Blue sergeant, clubbed him in the temple, and ran. For the second time today, he found himself bruised and battered after a fight.

What the hell is going on?

 

Morning in Alstat was accompanied by the familiar throb of her knee surfacing out of the pre-dawn mist. There was a parly ringing. Was it hers? Oh, shit, I’m back home. Dolora felt a sharp sensation of vertigo. She was falling into or out of her own bed. It had been a long time since she was in her own apartment. The familiar sight of the flaking paint on the ceiling swam into view. Her arms hurt where the commonists had grabbed her the night before. She rolled over and squinted at the parly-horn on the bedside table. The bell was ringing like nobody’s business, clanging away like an out-of-control streetwagon. “Alright, alright,” she told it, swilling whatever was in the cup on the nightstand. From the taste of it, polish remover and bidi butts.

She grabbed the horn out of the cradle and pulled the stick to her mouth. “Yeah, yeah. Dolora Spade of Spade and Kowalski. We’re on a job right now, so we can’t exactly take any extra work. If you have something that’ll wait, we—“

“Dolora.” Miles sounded angry.

“Miles! You old sack of shit. Where you been? I called you all night when I got in. Had a visit from O.” He hadn’t answered, and the operator said there was nothing wrong with his line. She’d had half a mind to go over there and hammer on the door, but she respected his privacy too much. Although, if he said he had a woman over, she was gonna blow her top.

“I was getting the shit beat out of me all day. Is that a click on the line?”

Dolora listened. She didn’t hear anything. “What are you talking about? You got beat up? You?”

“Very funny, short pants. Longstreet’s having a rally in our part of town today. We can talk there. Granite Street, where he gave that speech during the race. Don’t say anything else.” Click. Dialtone.

 

The Granite Street address was a turning point in the Longstreet campaign. Before that, the Kirks didn’t even want him to run. They’d done everything they could to block him. No one thought a man claiming to be the “broom of reform” could take Parliament Island. He was unheard of, except in certain parts of the Alstat. The radio address put Heward Longstreet on the map, so it didn’t strike Dolora as strange that he would return to the corner of Granite Street where he’d given the address in the first place.

The Alstat streets were crammed with people. News wagons had pulled up onto the sidewalk and erected aerials for broadcasting radio programs. Their reporters clutched microphones and stood on wagon-roofs.

An enormous rostrum had been hastily constructed in the early hours of the morning. The carpenters were putting the finishing touches on it as Dolora pushed her way down the street. One underneath the frame was cussing out the two on top. She smirked. Combine carpenters, surely, she thought. The combines had been big into Longstreet’s campaign; witness, the Steelworker’s Combine.

Blue gonfalons streamed from the rostrum: Kirk party colors. A blue banner hung limp from a wooden frame behind the podium. White lettering proclaimed “REVITALIZATION: A LONGSTREET PROMISE”. Just to one side of the construction, a brass band was tuning their instruments in a noise like some archaic New Territories beast of ten thousand throats. Dolora wasn’t even hungover for once. Her head was clear, which was good, because the air was thick with humidity and hot as hell. Her hair was frizzing at the ends.

She wove through the crowd toward Salafin’s. Every woman she saw turned into Kit at a distance. Correis, let her not be here. Cloche hats were all the fashion, had been for years. Somehow, each one Dolora saw undoubtedly belonged to Kit Winter. Her heart flinched away from every revelation: this wasn’t her, nor was that. The fear remained. She wasn’t ready to see Kit. She couldn’t explain what she’d done—or worse, maybe she could. It was no different from when she ran away to fight in the war.

It wasn’t Kit she was running from. Not that that mattered. It was the world! These phony Blues who don’t do their jobs, the phony politicos like Longstreet, the whole thing. I wasn’t running from her! So what was Dolora afraid of? Too many things to count. She was afraid that Kit would find her and chew her out for leaving. She was afraid that she wanted to leave, that it felt good to be “free” of her obligations. She was afraid of the city itself, and the way it tried to trap you. Somehow, even with all those fears, she was afraid that she’d lose Kit if she saw her again; that as long as she prolonged the confrontation over her selfish disappearance onto Iron Island, their relationship was held in a kind of freezer. It made her feel better, thinking of the two them stranded in hip-deep ice, frosted and unable to move. If she couldn’t go forward, neither could she go back. The relationship would be, ha ha, preserved.

There were all sorts here to see the prasident speak. It wasn’t going to be as easy as she thought to pick Miles out of the crowd. There were plenty of orcs pulling for Longstreet. That was how he’d won. Got his support from the people other politicians wouldn’t even touch. Heward Longstreet was, if nothing else, a masterful politician. He knew just what to say.

Take this Revitalization thing. There were Longstreet posters up and down the street. Some where stuck by wheat paste to brick walls, others where banners hung from balconies and windows. Vendors crammed in next to the people, selling food from push carts. The smell of sugar-floss, candied nuts, pickles, oysters, and steam-cases of meats plumed through the crowd. Hawkers were already shouting and thrusting paper cones full of popcorn above hatbands and feathers.

The entire petty aristocracy of Alstat was out today. Everyone wore their threadbare finest. Old furs from the back of the closet, smelling of moth balls, brushed against patched pinstripes and tarnished stick-pins. There were even a few of Dragon Empire men in queues near the back of the crowd.

Dolora’s back went up as she realized there were two full squadrons of Bluebells near the platform. Their shiny black autowagons were parked behind the carpenters. Four patrol wagons and five padlock trucks made a defensive perimeter. They aren’t fooling around. She scanned the crowd. There was no reason to expect violence. Was there? Her eyes naturally went up to the windows overlooking Granite Street, and the balconies hung not with banners but with the day’s washing.

“That’s our Varda, up there. Hadrada’s common-law wife.”

Dolora jumped. Miles had brushed through the crowd like an icebreaker ship. People tended to yield naturally before his frame. “Who?”

“A few stories up from the corner. That’s her building, remember? Up toward the top. See her?”

Dolora nodded. “Common-law?”

“I checked the city records. They lived together before she moved to this building and had it recognized and everything. Before I got these.” He winced.

Dolora turned to get a better look at her partner. Her heart nearly stopped. Miles looked terrible. He had a black eye, bruising all over his face, and he moved in his coat like a man with a liver condition. Every time he shifted, the cloth rubbed something tender. She wanted to clasp him by the arms and ask him what happened, but she knew it would only make the pain worse. “Miles…”

And I thought I had a hard time. He’s been to hell and back. That’ll teach me to feel bad for myself. She looked up at Miles Kowalski.

“Don’t give me that pity, Dolora Spade. You’re in a mess of your own, no help needed from me. But I have gotten some things down.”

“Me too,” she said quietly, “Did a days’ work for the Marcone mob. Might have to do more, but he’s extending his word to the Benevolents. Vouching for us.” She turned to look at Varda Ovirov again. The dwarf was at her balcony with two other girls, looking down at the crowd. They didn’t notice Miles and Dolora, or if they did didn’t think anything of it. It felt strange to be watching them, like Dolora was peeking in on someone doing something private. They were talking to each other, careless, as though nothing could hurt them.

“You don’t think it’s a jilted lover scenario?” she asked.

Miles shook his head. “Things are too complicated for that. Besides, what’s the play? She goes late at night to Krashnikol’s and pushes him into the trip-hammers? I don’t see it. Anyway, there’s more.” He glanced at her. “So, you got by old Marcone, huh?”

You have to tell him. “Not really.”

“Huh. How’dya mean?”

“I mean he made me.” She heard him suck air between his teeth. “It’s alright. He didn’t like McTavish either. Besides, I saved one of his girls from a Blue. Shot at him, actually.”

Miles grunted. “So you cozied up to a mob boss, got him on your side, and shot at a watch officer. That’s your typical afternoon.”

She erupted into laughter. After a second, he did too. It felt good. The tension, the anger, and the fear all flowed out of her at once. She’d been holding onto it for weeks. For years, probably. Since before the McTavish bullshit. Was that all it took? She wanted to hug him, but he was in no condition. Some folks nearby looked at them like they were loonies. She didn’t care. She felt like Varda up on that balcony. Let ‘em look. Or like the flamensoldat whispering his secret to her in the bunker. Free.

“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” she said, drying her eyes, holding the bubbling giddiness in her chest in check.

Miles nodded. “You ain’t kiddin, kiddo. You shot at a Blue, and I cold-cocked one with his own pistol.”

“You didn’t!”

He nodded.

“Miles Kowalski, you struck an officer of the law?” And there was that laughter again, infectious, impossible, pure. In the midst of that gale it was possible to forget they were talking about the murdered Hadrada Varnag, the widow Varda, and the whole stinking city. While they were laughing there was just Spade and Kowalski, private snoops.

Kowalski leaned against her, hand resting gently on her shoulder. She clapped him on the back. His groan only made them both laugh harder. It had been a long time since Dolora felt so at ease. The troubles with Kit, with the Blues, with the whole steaming stinking city, were washed away for that moment.

“We have a lot to talk about,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I couldn’t get the Kirk records—not yet, anyway, but I was followed by some ersatz Johnny out of the Hall of Records. I think he was a veteran. Had a whole reconstruction along the side.” Miles demonstrated with his hand, showing where his shadow had been plated with glistening metal.

Dolora frowned. “I found out some things, too. The commonists basically kidnapped me the other day. That woman, O, she—“

She was cut off by the screech of the microphone on the stage. An MC had taken hold and was introducing the Stadtprasident. Miles and Dolora fell silent while the crowd roared. In the gap between the MC’s announcement and Longstreet taking the platform, Dolora said quietly, “There’s something going on between the commonists and the Kirks. I don’t know if they’re supporting him or…”

“I don’t think it’s the Kirks,” Miles said.

Now the Stadtsprasident took the stage. He was handsome sort of fella, if that’s the kind of thing you were into. He oozed a kind of folksy power. His hair fell to one side of his face, well-brushed and slicked with grooming product. He was young for prasident and though he wasn’t thin, he’d always been compared with the bulky Boss Harker during the campaign, so he looked positively svelte. He wore a white linen suit and a straw hat. Dark eyes, dark curly hair, and a cherubically plump face rode above the high starched collar and brightly patterned tie.

“Folks,” he said, holding the stalk of the microphone and speaking crisply into its spring-framed disc, “We are here today, on this glorious spring morning on the cusp of summer, because a few months ago I made a promise. By the Fabricators, I intend to follow it through! Many of you were here a year ago when I made my first Granite Street address. Well, now I stand before you in the office of Stadtprasident which you helped me to obtain. I am here as your servant! And as I promised on that sweltering summer day in 5728, I am going to revitalize the Alstat. No more will we be last in importance to the fat cats in Silver City, in Woodland Park, in Centrum Heights. No!”

Dolora drew Miles away from the curb and said, “I think our Hadrada was a commonist. They pulled me off a streetwagon last night and their factor, O, told me to look out for the mob of all things.”

“How did they know you were working with the Marcones?” Miles frowned.

Behind them, the Stadtprasident went on: “Investment has already been made. Look out there and find the buildings that have been marked for revitalization! With the help of my office and the Parliament, we’ve gotten the money together, finally, to begin. Now I promised revitalization would start within my first year of office, but we’re well ahead of schedule! You see that apartment block marked with posters? They signify that the building will be torn down and rebuilt. Yes, rebuilt! We don’t have to live in squalor, without fulminating power, or with bad water systems, or substandard steam heat. In fact, we won’t! We refuse to do it!”

Dolora shook her head at her partner. “The Juridicium was right. They have spies all over the city. We have to be careful.” She turned and looked at the platform as Longstreet took a long break to bask in the applause of the crowd. “You know, I still don’t trust him.”

“Who? Longstreet? Focus, D. We need a plan.”

She turned back. “Oh, I’ve got one. You and I are going to go to the Benevolent Association and find Hadrada’s friends.”

Back to the Table of Contents.