FOUNDRYSONG Chapter 5: Motion

 “Naow, Mistah Trist, yew can see what was meant when we wahned that ya’ needed a special kind of protection.” Warden Cain stood at the door of his solitary cell.

Tyrsis was shivering. His eyes were hollow pools. Cain muttered something to the physician at his side. The doctor shrugged.

“Nerves, I suspect. I could give him a tincture of opium, but in his condition…”

Tyrsis watched the doctor and the warden warily. He was all tension, like a high-voltage fulminating power line strung from a sparking dynamo. Every part of his body was charged. It had been a long night and a longer day between. The “investigation,” if you could call it that, was cursory and useless. No one said anything about the guards that left the library. The warden lying to his face, telling him it was about the orc kid and his mother Trist hit in his icewagon. He knew that wasn’t true. He knew surely as he knew when he heard the assassin creeping up on him. Someone had payed to have him killed. Who? Who would care? No bereaved community could put together cash to bribe guards in the Pen and pay off a trained mob killer.

His prison jumpsuit was still smeared with his would-be murderer’s blood. He’d been held in medical isolation for the entire day. Whatever sleep he got was by accident. He knew there would be others; he didn’t know how soon or how many. He wasn’t even sure what it was about. The same people who got Hadrada are after me. This is what he told himself to keep awake with his back up against the cold steel coolers in the infirmary.

He had no idea how long or how many times his head had knocked against the metal and woken him again. The thing was, he had no intention of sleeping. His body had a desire, yes. His eyes were burning. His mind was on fire. His arms and legs trembled with effort. He felt like he was shooting bolts of lightning into every surface. They’re not done with me. They’re going to come again. I can’t be asleep when they come.

It was luck that had allowed him to survive the first attempt. He couldn’t count on being lucky. His whole being craved a sip of the blood to help level him out, to put his mood right, to calm the frenzy that was straining to get out. He felt like there was a madman in his ribcage, clawing for freedom. Just a sip to calm the stutter of my heart.

Luck would not carry him through another assassin. He was lucky that he heard the footsteps behind him. Lucky that he had the broom in his hand. The man they’d paid to murder him was far more skilled than he; Tyrsis had never had to kill a man before. If he hadn’t slipped, if the broom hadn’t broken, if, if, if, if any of half-a-hundred things hadn’t gone his way, Tyrsis would be dead. He couldn’t overlook this fact. I cheated. And the worst thing was that he wanted to be dead. He’d cheated time, and fate, and life, and he didn’t even deserve it. I killed that boy. I deserve to join him.

But not like this.

He deserved punishment for his crime. This wasn’t punishment. This wasn’t vengeance. He should go to the place where he’d crashed and open his throat on the sidewalk. The blood wouldn’t bring them back, but it would wash clean the slate. Please make me clean.

This wasn’t punishment because this had nothing to do with the boy and his mother. If he died at the hands of some hired assassin for something he didn’t really understand, he would never be free. His cursed soul would be refused from the gates of the Fabricators and turned back to wander the earth. Artax, what if I’m sent to Aeren instead of Cinder City? It was said that the sons of Aere went back to their true home. I’ve never even set foot on the damn islands. I don’t want to be an Aeren ghost!

The warden wasn’t in on it. If he was, he could’ve had me finished when I was in the infirmary. Tyrsis was in no condition to defend himself. The physician could put him under right now. The tincture of opium he was preparing could be a pure shot of morphine, enough to turn his breathing shallow, shallower, gone. But there’s no saying the doctor didn’t get a side-deal with… with who? Stadtprasident Longstreet?

He didn’t even know who we were. Maybe that fucking priest.

Could Father Adelaide be behind this? He’d been their direct overseer during the Longstreet campaign.

According to his memory, which he had no reason to disbelieve, it was Saturday at the end of May. Summer was right around the corner. He could imagine that devious priest in his frock murmuring amongst the aisles of the cathedral. Oh yes, Father, we’ll do as you ask. We’ll surely do it. Or maybe it was Lee Finster and the combine toughs. He could see the sweat-beaded face of Finster even now, standing at the front of the combine hall. Oh, surely, Mr. Finster, oh surely, we can drive the truck. And Hadrada will do the loading.

Who else knew? Tyrsis wracked his brains. Who else KNEW? For surely it came from that quarter. For he and Hadrada both to stand under the executioner’s axe, it had to be someone involved with the Kirks. With the election.

Maybe there were people he’d never even heard of, never even seen, involved. It might be outside the parsimonious parson’s hands. Maybe Cory Adelaide, that lying crony, had gone to his masters on Parliament Island. Artax, it could be the Judges themselves. It could be anyone. For the first time in thirty hours he wondered how he was going to make it through this.

The answer came true as trust while the doctor shot the opium tincture into his arm. You’re not, Tyrsis, you fool. You’re at the end of the line.

He sank into a medicated bliss. Not as good as the blood, though. If I had a little of the blood… If he did, then what?

The day flashed by like slides in a magic lantern. The warden vanished along with his doctor lackey. Passing prisoners peered through the narrow bars of the door. No guards shooed them away. Tyrsis smiled a stupid, mocking smile between sleep and wakefulness. He had no way of telling what was real and what was a dream anymore. The blood deprivation ran together with the sweet lure of the opium. This was like being hooked on the sirensong. That’s what those siren fiends had told him. It was like this: your life didn’t get better, it just got more confusing, more bearable.

That wasn’t just opium.

Tincture of opium was medicinal. You could get it at a hospital, or from a clinic. He was phasing in and out of existence like a bulb with a broken filament. Doc, doc, what was in that needle?

Then again, maybe it was exhaustion coupled with the withdrawal shakes, compounded with the opium. If it was opium. Was it?

There was Hadrada standing in the corner. Tyrsis knew it couldn’t be him, because Hadrada was dead, but there he was with his bristly beard and his secret cog handshake. They were riding in the truck back in the sweltering summer heat of the election. The cargo container was stuffed with wooden boxes. They were driving through the marshes at the edge of the peninsula.

Hadrada leaned over and pointed to the giantsblood bottle in Tyrsis’ lap. “You can’t drink that.”

“I know. I don’t. I quit.”

The old dwarf shook his head. “No, you didn’t. You think you did.”

“I wasn’t drinking! I hadn’t had one drop when we did this!” This was last summer. A lifetime ago. He hadn’t been drinking.

“Yeah, but you’re drinking now. You were drinking the night you killed him.” Hadrada had a way with words. He could dig them into you. It was a Dvangar thing, Tyrsis was sure of it. He’d never heard anyone speak with such vehement accusation as Hadrada when he got some little bit of something he wanted to drill into your side. He’d fashion his weapon and then bring it to bear and just drill, and drill, and drill. “You were stone drunk on the blood. And you swore you weren’t going to have any more.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Tyrsis murmured. “You were dead.”

Now they were in his cell again, and Hadrada was dead. He was pale as the grave. His eyes were bottomless wells. He was being called home, to the Fabricators, who cared so much for the world they gave it life. He was an angel, an avenging angel. “Yes, Tyrsis. Dead. Like you’re going to be.”

“We did it though.” The truck. The boxes. The papers.

Hadrada, Angel-of-Vengeance, nodded. “We did.”

“I deserve it.”

“You do.”

When the Corrections Officer, a gray-uniformed ghost, came into the cell to do the deed, Tyrsis was barely responsive. It only took a little pressure, a little push, to set him sailing to his reward. Or, as he feared it, to vengeance.

 

The night heat was intense. A wave of oppressive air had crept through the city from the Treaty Territories. The streets themselves were hot as sticky tar. Shirts stuck to skin and stockinged legs rubbed at the thighs. Tired clerks pulled on their collars. Ladies shucked their coats, their stoles, and their heels. Dolora took off her tie and unbuttoned her shirt to the third button. Miles wore his loose around his neck, a noose of fabric.

This didn’t seem to bother anyone in the Dragons. Dragonfolk ignored the stifling humidity as though it were another part of life. Haggling went on as loud as ever, with vendors calling departing customers back to offer yet another round of discounts. Streetwagons disgorged scores of women in starched dresses fresh from the laundries and the shirtwaist workshops.

“Well, Kowalski,” Dolora said as they strolled toward the towering pagoda of the Benevolent Association, “are you ready for this?”

Miles grumbled. “Your friend in Orcland called ahead, right?”

She nodded. After the rally, she’d spent the day on Iron Island making herself absolutely filthy. Marcone had asked her to go to the watch houses and listen for Blues who might be in the pay of one of his enemies. No one put together that she was the same woman who’d shot at an officer a few nights back, but they did know who she was. Their faces were sour milk left out to spoil. “Spade, we didn’t think we’d ever see you round here again.” “Yeah, Spade, we heard you got your ass shot off in the war. I guess its still there.” “Those Rijkies didn’t teach you how to shut up and stop sticking your nose where it don’t belong, did they Spade?” But this was the cost of Marcone’s help, so she sucked it up, made like it was nothing much, though with every word her blood pressure climbed like an out-of-control steam boiler.

At the door of the Benevolent Society, Dolora presented herself as Myrtle from Orcland. Night in the pagoda was another world. The sleepy wood-panelled rooms Dolora had seen on her first pass through had utterly changed character. They were slammed with guests, thunderous with noise. Bells, shouts, chimes, even what sounded like a gong thronged through the press. Dolora had expected the crowd to be in fancy suits, spats even, but there were men in undershirts and flat caps with bidis stuck to their lips.

The waiters and croupiers were all dressed impeccably. They sailed through the crowd unimpeded. Rickety metal carts filled with food rolled across the floors. Sticky rice, steamed buns, shrimp shu mai, all trundling at waist height. “How do they figure out what you pay for?” asked Miles as pork buns floated by.

“If you take something they give you a card, and you have to get it stamped at the counter before you leave,” Dolora explained. She’d never eaten at the Benevolent Association, but she’d had dim sum before. Anyone who spent time on the Dragonside shift did. It was supposed to be “just like home” in the South Dragon Sea.

“We have to go further in, to the rooms where Hadrada played.” Jie Wei said he was here to pay off debts he owed to Marcone, and that he had friends who came here too. “There are probably Kirk people somewhere in the inside.” She gestured as best she could to the central rooms of the pagoda, at its heart. These were roped off still, watched by strummer-armed guards, and less noisy than the throng along the perimeter.

“You had the Orcland bosses call ahead,” Jie Wei said, smoothly approaching her. He came at an angle just outside of her field of vision, and so seemed to leap into being right next to her like a malevolent djinn. She actually jumped. “You’re welcome to come on in, Ms. Spade. Please, this way.” As he lead them through the crowd, Dolora caught a quick glimpse of an adjacent room. Two men were engaged in a heated screaming match to one side of a game of dominoes. They were both Dragonlanders, and both so red in the face they resembled lobsters.

“What are they arguing about? Someone cheating at cards?”

Jie Wei scoffed. “No, not cards.”

“What then?” Miles asked. “Don’t you want to break it up?”

“Them? No. It’s a political argument.”

“How could that possibly be political?” Miles stopped. “Hold on. I’ll separate them. I’m big. They won’t hurt me.”

Jie Wei hissed and interposed himself between Miles and the other room. “No.” He made a chopping motion through the air. “You see those men at the door? And those there? And that wooden panel behind the plant? Each one is armed. There are four more waiting behind there if things get out of hand. This is to be expected. If you were to get involved, you’d probably be knifed. You’re an outsider. You don’t understand.” He lowered his voice. “You know, there is a war on.”

“There’s a war?” Dolora balked. The war is over.

Jie Wei looked at her like she’d pissed on the floor. “Not your war. I understand why you don’t know anything about it. In the Empire.”

“Who’s fighting whom?”

Now the waiter rolled his eyes. “It would take too long to explain. Emperors. Commonists. Foreign powers.”

Miles ran his tongue over his tusks. “And those two in there support different sides?”

With an offended huff, Jei Wei deflated. “Yes! Yes. The man on the left supports the Warlord Zhang Zuolin. The man on the right supports the emperor. Both hate the Wakuo. They invaded in the north and east, cut the empire in half. Why am I telling you this? You don’t care, or need to know. Follow me.”

Dolora almost couldn’t help herself. In an off-hand way, she found herself sniping, “No commonists?”

“Not in here.” Jie snapped. “But don’t worry. There are plenty of them, too.”

He conducted them through the rope and into the central room. This was an eight-sided hall, open and without divisions. There were gambling tables scattered throughout according to some inscrutable plan. There were cards, strange Dragon Empire tile games, roulette wheels. “Where did Hadrada play? Do you see his friends here?”

Jie nodded. “There. At the far table, playing poker. Do you see them? The two men there.” He pointed, careful to move Miles in the way, so as not to alert them. “They are called Ephraim and Johnson. I don’t know much about them, but they have the blessing of the Deputy Mountain Master. She’s the head of this chapter. So whatever you do, try to do it discreetly.”

Dolora nodded. No problem. Discreet was her middle name. When she saw Miles stifling a laugh she elbowed him in his not inconsiderable gut.

Ephraim had a neck like an ostrich and wore a mustache and chin beard. His head swiveled on its joint as though held up by wire. Johnson, crushed next to him, was a tough fireplug of a man. His suit barely fit him, and strained when he moved, as though made for a man many times smaller than he. Dolora saw no reason not to walk right up to them and get what she wanted. Who was she trying to fool? These two jackasses had information and she had money. It was Miles who gently interposed.

“Hold on, now,” he said. He pitched his voice to a low purr. “Let’s not just charge in, strummers blazing.” He touched her shoulder. This stopped her more than anything he said. She yielded to his touch and turned to look at him.

“What? How do you want to play it?” Slow Miles, cautious Miles. Maybe we need caution this time.

Ephraim won a hand while they talked. Johnson laughed and clapped him on the back. The dealer pushed golden chips, printed with that snaky Dragon writing, toward him.

“Slow. Sit down. Play a bit.”

Dolora shook her head. “No, Miles. We’re in too deep now. Who knows how long we have? We have to do this direct.”

“Go straight at ‘em and they’re liable to bring up their defenses,” he cautioned. “It’s a dumb move, and we aren’t going to do it.”

“But—“

“Have I got a say in this business, or not?” Miles asked. He wasn’t posturing, just reminding. Dolora sighed. The big dope was right. She’d follow his lead. For now. If we aren’t getting anything, then its time to turn on the pressure. These low down mopes know something about their dead buddy. They should’ve come forward. Course, maybe they didn’t know that what they knew was important. Maybe they didn’t even know he was dead, yet. News could travel surprisingly slow in certain parts of town. You woke up day in and day out going about your business and then one day you found out that your mother had been dead for a month.

They played it Miles’ way. Jie Wei sold them chips and they went and played poker. It ate nearly an hour while they got to “know” Ephraim and Johnson. Johnson was a flamboyant player, betting in huge swings. Ephraim almost never played, folding instantly unless he had something worthwhile. Miles and Dolora both portioned out their money in an even, steady fashion. It’s coming out of the dailies, anyway.

Once the drinks started coming, Miles brought up Tyrsis Trist. Just to see what would happen. At once Ephraim and Johnson both turned gray. Johnson, the more talkative, made the sign of the Fabricators over his heart and touched his thumb to his lips. “They got him,” was all he said.

“The Blues? We knew that. Right after the accident, I heard,” Miles prompted. Dolora watched both of them, waiting for telltale signs, but she needn’t have. They were open with their feelings. It was clear both men knew Trist.

Ephraim shook his head. “Not the watch. He shoulda kept clean. They got him in the Pen. Some big Oenotrian thug tried to strangle him a few nights ago. Looks like someone finished the job. He’s gone. Too bad.”

“Good driver when he wasn’t touching the blood,” Johnson agreed morosely.

Dead. Tyrsis Trist was dead. Now they knew something was up. For Hadrada and Tyrsis to go so close together… they must have been in one something. Something that went belly up. And these two sons-of-bitches know what it was. Fat Johnson and the

Dolora leaned in. “You knew him?”

“Bets, ma’am,” the dealer complained. Dolora huffed and placed a chip on her cards without looking at them.

Johnson went on. “Of course. That’s two from the campaign now. Hope it’s not catching.”

“What’s not?” Miles asked.

“Murder.” This time it was Ephraim who answered. His voice was clipped, his eyes shadowed. He preened his mustache as he peered at the two cards he’d been dealt, then pushed them forward to indicate he didn’t intend to pay the ante.

“Why would it be catching?”

“You know,” Johnson said, gesturing broadly and nearly spilling his drink. The ice clinked in his tumbler as he caught it and placed it back on the edge of the felt. “He worked the election with us. We’re just some guys who were doing a job. A Kirk job. Fabricators bless the Kirks.”

“Fabricators bless Longstreet,” Ephraim said with solemnity.

He’s getting suspicious, Dolora thought.

Miles didn’t say anything. Dolora wanted him to push. Go on, break him. Make him angry. All you have to do is keep talking. That’s what he doesn’t like, talking about the election. There was something eating at the crane-necked Ephraim. She wanted to find out what it was. But Miles didn’t keep going. Instead he quieted down again, ordered some food, and they played a few more hands.

It was Dolora who asked, “So what did you guys do for the Kirks?”

“Ward boss,” Johnson said. He practically crowed. “Just took over for Harold DeWhitt. That’s how come they all know me in here.” He grinned at the dealer. “Mountain Master and everything. It’s good to be a Kirk in Alstat, I’ll say.”

“Especially since Longstreet,” from Miles. Shut up, Miles, let me drive at what I want.

Ephraim hadn’t bothered to reply: he just looked sullenly at his cards and made a bet.

“So what did Trist do on the campaign? Why do you say murder might be catching?”

Ephraim moved to shut Johnson up, but it was too late. The big man was already falling over himself to give away more information. “He was the driver for our operative, Hadrada Varnag. The combine sent them over to ferry boxes for us. Both of ‘em bought the farm in a few days of each other. Something in the water, I guess.” Ephraim snarled.

Dolora tapped on the table, a signal to Miles. No more. This was a two-fingered tap, a sign long since worked out between them to indicate that a topic had run dry. Miles turned to look at her and tapped the bruise below his eye. Her eyebrows shot up. No. Miles Kowalski wants to lean on a guy? I don’t believe it. But he did. And minutes later, when Ephraim got up to relieve himself, Miles and Dolora followed.

They cut after him through the crowd, a pair of sharks. “We’re really gonna do this? Right in Benevolent territory?” Dolora was filled with nervous energy. She loved this shit, and could not believe Miles was already onboard. Maybe all that getting stomped on had changed his mind. Time to stomp on someone else, for a change. This Ephraim character seemed like just the guy to do it to. He was uptight, wound up, and looked like he had a cruel streak.

Dolora surged ahead to scout for the outside door nearest the bathroom. She found it not five steps away, and posted by it. As Ephraim came near she spun to face the panelled wall so he wouldn’t see her. Miles followed him, nodded at Dolora, and disappeared into the men’s room after the Kirk operative. Seconds later he came barreling out with his hand over Ephraim’s mouth. Dolora smoothly opened the alley door and the three of them disappeared from the Benevolent Association as though they’d never been there. No one saw us.

Miles threw Ephraim across the alley into a trash can. Dolora posted at one side, Miles at the other. They closed. “What did Hadrada Varnag and Tyrsis Trist really do? Why is the Juridicium involved? Do you know someone called Williams? A lawyer?”

Miles kicked him in the side. “Why was I followed?” he thundered.

Damn, Miles is mad.

“Stop, stop!” Ephraim groaned. They were on him, pressing him against the bricks. “I don’t know anything about the Jurdicium, and I don’t know who got Trist!”

Miles slammed him against the wall again. “You have a good guess.”

“I do, I do,” he said, panting. “They got rid of votes. That’s all! They were sent by the combine to help make sure Longstreet won. It must be Harker’s guys that got them! They must’ve found out!”

Dolora got up close. “The boxes their truck carried for you?”

“Ballots! They burned them in a drydock in Shipston. That’s all I know!”

“You cheated!” Miles shouted. He knocked Ephraim’s head against the brickwork. “You won the election by cheating!”

“Oh, get off your god-damn high horse, mister!” Ephraim spat. He pushed back, struggled for a moment against the orc’s bulk, then fell limp against the stone and slid to the ground. Miles let him descend. “Harker’s side was cheating for years. They all do it. The old Kirks, the ones who played it safe all those years, they didn’t really want to win. Longstreet’s different. He’s a reformer! He had to win. Don’t you understand? These people are gonna die out here, unless someone helps them. Longstreet’s the only guy who can do it.

“We were fighting the Kirk establishment and the Cavaliers at the same time. You think they don’t get those Unionist lackeys to back them up when they want to come intimidate folks at the polls? We needed a way to fight back. The combine gave us that way… They gave us Trist and Varnag.”

Unionists. He was talking about the Party for the Reunion of the New Territories. They were cranks who wanted Cinder City to rejoin Ae Vira as a colony again. Figured that they were out there terrorizing orcs and dwarves in Alstat.

Hadrada and Trist worked together. On the same project. Rigging the vote.

Miles took a step back from the battered operative. “Holy shit, D.”

“Holy shit is putting it lightly,” Dolora agreed.

 

Dolora hated it when someone said that something “blew the case wide open,” but she had to admit that the expression, in this instance, fit. It was now a Sunday. Dolora was, contrary to what she’d expected when she woke up that morning, actually feeling good. Miles, on the other hand, nursed a hangover, bruises, the whole nine yards. He was sequestered behind his desk snoozing when Dolora got in. Usually, I’m the one who uses the office as a second house. She looked at her partner.

Miles Kowalski was an honest, upright guy. He hadn’t been as rigid as her in his career as Blue, she knew that, but he was from different stock. He was an orc. You had to go along to get along sometimes, as an orc. Sure, she was one of the first women officers on the Watch, but she was Ae Viran when it came down to it. Her and Kit both: cream-white skin, Aonic features, your classical Continentals. There might be some Etoillere in there somewhere. Her mother had never been clear on that point. What was more, what was important, was that she was human.

Kowalski had some kind of northern-continental sound to it (wasn’t that close to a Dvangar name?), but Miles was as deeply Cinder City as Dolora; neither had ever known any other home. Still, he was an orc and that made a difference. A world of difference. She’d heard her officers talking about it before. Orcs didn’t go higher up than shamuses in the Watch. There were no orc captains. She wondered what that made Marcone. An Oenotrian orc who came to Cinder City to make good. He’s like a petty king on Iron Island. What was it like, in Oeonotrios, to be an orc? Maybe that’s what made him so ruthless. The pressures that had forced Miles to compromise with himself, to take bribes, to turn the other cheek, those could be the same things that had turned Aniello Marcone hard as nails. You bend or you turn into iron yourself, or else you break. Only three ways out.

She sighed. He was like a big kid in a lot of ways. For all the dark shadow of unshaven beard now growing, he was just a doofy older brother. His head was tilted back, his legs up on his desk, his whole body carelessly splayed across the office. His tie had a mustard stain on it. She wanted to walk over and fix his jacket, put his collar straight, brush his hair into shape. It was an easy urge to resist: Dolora wasn’t over-used to sentiment.

Instead, she walked to her desk and separated her collated stacks of files. When he didn’t wake up after an hour, she went down to the vendors, found the pushcart she wanted, bought a cardboard cup of clam chowder, and set it carefully on Kowalski’s ink blotter. When he finally came to twenty minutes later, she knocked on the partition and said, “Hey, Miles. Eat up! You need it.” She heard him chortling.

“So, Kowalski,” she asked when he was done, having emerged from her own office, “what did we learn? Whatta we know? We’ve burned a lot of time on this case.”

“It’s got something to do with an electioneering scandal,” Miles said.

No shit, Miles. “Yeah, but we need more than that.”

The parly rang. “Hold on, I’ll take it. Spade and Kowalski.” He goggled his eyes at her. “No, Kit. She’s not here.”

Oh fuck me. Dolora’s stomach dropped out. She’d been holding her fears about Kit in suspension like trotters in aspic for so long, she’d forgotten they were even there. Now, everything slammed back into place. I treated her like shit.

“I will. I’ll tell her, Kit. No, I know. She knows too, it’s just a touchy case. One of our leads got iced the other day in the Pen, so she’s had to… No, she knows that. She won’t. Well, she said she won’t anyway, we both know how much that—yeah, OK. OK. I got it. I’ll tell her. Bye.”

He put the parly-horn back on its hook. The candlestick holder rocked on its base and the mouthpiece glared menacingly at her. Kit.

“Well,” she started, only to be interrupted by the buzzer. Miles raised his brows.

“Close call,” he said as she buzzed in whoever it was down at their door, “you might have had to talk about your feelings.”

“Shut up and get your strummer ready,” she griped. “I’m not expecting anybody.”

For a shamus like Dolora this was a worrying sign. They’d stopped taking cases and fired half their staff. Not only was their mark a dead dwarf, but his friend was a dead elf. They’d pushed their luck in half-a-hundred different places and made some enemies. Hell, Dolora had more enemies than she could count. It wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that Marcone or one of his rivals might send someone to finish her off. It probably wouldn’t be a Bluebell squad with repeaters, but she couldn’t just dismiss that idea either. In her mind’s eye, like a kinograph, she saw men who could be Blues or mobsters, maybe led by Grady from the local watch house or by Slim from Iron Island, slouching up the stairs with repeaters in their hands, ready to blow her and Miles to pieces.

The outer door of the office rattled as someone tried the handle. Dolora pulled her strummer from her armpit. Slowly, like a snake charmer afraid of the serpent, she raised it. Eyes on Miles, she asked, “Who is it?”

A muffled voice: “Is this uh, Spade and K’walski? I need to talk with Dolora.” It was low and gravelly.

“Can’t you read, mac? It says on the door.”

Silence. Then, “Oh, didn’t see. Can I… Can I come in?”

“Why are you looking for Dolora?” she asked.

“I got something to tell her. Something she’ll want to hear.”

This wasn’t getting any better. With each cryptic answer, Dolora was more convinced that the voice belonged to a button man. Miles gestured for her to open it. She stamped her foot. No! Any minute now and we’re going to go down in a hail of fire! But he didn’t relent. “Uh… hello?” the voice asked.

“Yeah, OK, I’m coming,” Dolora grumbled. She put her pistol away and threw the door aside.

Standing in the hall, looking none-too-comfortable himself, was a dwarf with a short, fashionable beard. He had red hair and green eyes, and spoke with an Aeren brogue so thick you could cut it like lumber, plane it, and use it to hold up the crossbeam of your house. “Are you Dolora, then? Dotti sent me. Dotti Freeman.”

“I know Dotti,” Dolora said, surprised. The first and most intense wave of fear drained out of her heels and into the floor. Dotti could be trusted, was her initial thought, and then Dotti was thinking of me. This was followed by Now, now, that’s quite enough of that bullshit, Ms. Spade. Focus on the task at hand, and then, if you need a longer-term goal, remember Kit Winter. You know? The girl who was just on the parly with Miles asking if you were still alive? The doll who’s supported you through thick and thin, even when you ran off to play toy soldier in the Aonrijk for your patriotic duty. “Come on in.”

The dwarf situated himself at Miles’ desk. They got him a cup of burnt coffee. Dolora offered to fetch some clam chowder from the street-cart, but the dwarf declined. He refused to give his name, but said he was “A combine man,” who worked at Krashnikol’s. “I saw you there the other night, Mr. Kokwalski. That Continental cop you got in a fight with, Krasky? I saw him there the night Mr. Varnag got offed. That’s what Dotti told me to come tell you. She heard I knew. Said she owed you a favor, and that the favor’s repaid.” He grinned and his cheeks turned several shades redder. “Now she owes me a favor, too.”

Dolora made a face. “Great. Who’s Krasky, how do you know he was there on the night Hadrada was, and why did—wait a minute, this is the Blue you said you cold-cocked, Miles?”

The dwarf laughed and Miles nodded. “Yeah. I remember, I got a pretty good look at his badge before I put him out.”

“I don’t get it.” Dolora folded her arms. “Why did you come to us? I understand that you have some connection to Dotti, but who are you? Why are you here?” None of this made sense. In Dolora’s world, people didn’t just volunteer information like this. Dotti owes a favor, and now the favor’s repaid. What did that mean? Obviously the favor was driving off that Blue john who had his hands on her. But who is Dotti to curry favors like this? To send some nameless dwarf to our office? It would make sense that she ran Marcone’s interests in the apartment building, looked after the other girls, maybe made the collections for him. That all tracked, all made sense to her. But this dwarf didn’t seem related to that.

He had grime under his nails and worked as a loader on Iron Island. That meant he’d probably been in a whorehouse once or twice. But what wore, even one as alluring as Dotti, held leverage over their johns that she could send them off to give key bits of intel to the shamuses investigating a murder?

“This doesn’t add up,” she said.

The dwarf scowled. “I’ll not be giving my name or nothing else. Take me at my word, or don’t. It’s all the same to me. I’m trying to tell you someaught.”

“Hold on, now, hold on, she’s not saying you have to give up your name. We’ve worked with anonymous sources before.” Miles held his hands up to show his good faith.

The dwarf’s expression softened, but only a little. “Well, as I said, I saw Krasky watching that dock the night Mr. Varnag was sent to the other side. He’s an Iron Island sergeant in Foundrytown. Sounds like a fella you’ve had run-ins with.” Miles nodded. “He’s a known swell in those parts, and Krashnikol’s is the part of his route. He runs errands for powers bigger’n him. And that’s all I have to say on that.”

He stood. “Bloody awful way for a combine man to go. No brother worker should face the hammer like that. ‘Twas the bosses, I say. It always is. Look far enough, follow the stinking blood through enough twists and turns, and you always get to the bosses.”

“They aren’t to blame for everything,” Dolora said. She’d seen enough assaults and even a few murders in her time that were squarely the fault of drunken dockhands and jilted lovers.

The dwarf shook his head. “Nay, you say that now, but even if they didn’t do the deed, they made the world such as it is that people must knife, and club, and shoot each other to get ahead. Mark me, the bosses want it that way too. Each of us clawing at the other like some wild beast.”

“You sound less like a combine man and more like one of those Cogs,” she said softly. Miles shot her a look.

The guest stiffened and rose from his chair. He took his hat in his hands. “Well,” he pronounced, “I’ve done my deed. Now its time for you to do yours and find the perpetrator of this murder. For that’s what it is, no?”

“Yes,” said Miles and Dolora both.

“We’re working for a combine,” she added, to help make up for some of the damage she’d done her reputation in the dwarf’s eyes.

He nodded. “That’s right and good. Dotti told me. Lee Finster’s local. Well, just you ask Krasky some questions, and you’ll get to the heart of it, soon enough.”

 

When the nameless dwarf had gone, Miles and Dolora mulled over what they’d heard. It helped Miles think to talk aloud, and it helped Dolora think to listen. “No one blames their own people. There’s no easy answer staring us in the face. Hadrada wasn’t well-liked but he wasn’t hated either. He owed money to the Oenotrians. It might have been Marcone, but then there would have been a clear message. They don’t just kill people for the fun of it, they usually want folks to sit up and take notice, realize that they aren’t going to be bilked. And besides, he wasn’t in hock bad enough that they didn’t give him a pass to go and try to make good his debt in the Dragons. So he wasn’t in the Marcone black books just yet.”

“Besides,” Dolora interjected, “I told Marcone what I was looking for.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, he could have sent you on a wild goose chase so you’d do work for him.”

Dolora insisted. “That doesn’t wash, I coulda done the work for him anyway and at the end of it he could’ve told me to screw.”

“This way it puts suspicion off him. Just like you’re doing.”

She huffed. “If he was involved and Dotti really wanted to do me a favor, she’d give him up. That’s not what she did. She sent a combine loader to us to tell us he saw a Watchman shadowing the Krashnikol place the night of the murder. So that puts the suspicion on this Krasky, or else it means he may have seen who did the murder. And what about all the ancillary stuff?”

Miles nodded, swilled his by-now cold coffee, went on. “Right, right. We got Tyrsis Trist, now ex-Tyrsis Trist, who was offed in the hoosegow. They’ll say because he killed some locals in a drunken accident, but we can surmise it had something to do with electioneering. Those jokers at the Benevolent Association said that murder was ‘catching.’ People who had worked on the Longstreet campaign. Still, I can’t believe Heward Longstreet, the Big Reformer, would be involved in offing these folks. No one who worked for him could be. Cleaning up loose ends, I know, I know.” He was pacing now, and occasionally looking through the slats of the blinds, as though he were expecting to be under surveillance. The wood clacked when he touched it. “But who promised to fix the water? The fulminating power? Who’s gone in and started repairing those leaking steam lines under the street? That would never have been fixed.”

He was right. Dolora knew it. Hell, she had even seen those statographs of the riots in Hadrada Varnag’s apartment. Talk about better steam. He’d been in the Steam Riots. Back when the Alstat was freezing and people were dying of cold and starvation, half a century ago. No reformer in the prasident’s chair gave the Alstat those steam vents. Hadrada gave us that. The thought shocked her, but it was true. He had been there. The riots gave us steam heat in the Alstat, and Hadrada Varnag was in those riots.

How many winters had Dolora sat by the window and listened to the radiator ping? How many trays had she put under leaky release-valves? When she was little she used to pretend the puff of steam coming out of the metal bell was a hot rain from the New Territories jungles, pouring over their apartment. We had heat in those winters because of him. We owe him.

It’s not just a job, she realized. Maybe it had started that way, with Krashnikol and his little yellowed office, but the investigation had soon taken on a life of its own. It was filled with half a hundred twists and turns. Even while Miles was trying to nail down the answers, the paths multiplied in front of her. It had started as yet another job, the thing a private shamus did, but now the threads weren’t coming together into a nice little ball, and Hadrada was in the Steam Riots that gave us heat when we were kids. There were so many winters that she’d been afraid she would freeze to death on the way to and from the apartment. Mama could have died, but she didn’t, because Hadrada fought for the steam.

It didn’t matter how complex the possibilities were. It didn’t matter that they were unfolding like the petals of a poisonous flower. We owe him this.

Miles stood still, formulating before he put it into words. That meant he’d found something and was trying to work out if it made sense before he voiced it. When he worked a thought all the way through inside before saying it out loud, it meant he was certain it was close to correct. She could see him running it down, chasing through its leads, hounding its details. He didn’t want to share it until it was ready. She could wait.

“It could just as easily be Boss Harker,” he said.

“Before you say no, follow me here: Harker cheats. The Kirks normally cheat but not too much. Longstreet wins over the Old Kirk high-ups by cheating better than them, promising things in Alstat where they don’t campaign, and sweeping himself to victory on a tidal wave of popular support. The combines go in for him.”

“Go on.” She was following this. It made a kind of sense. Boss Harker, the Stadtsprasident of campaigns past, had never lost an election. Everyone knew it was graft, but no one did anything about it. Then up comes Heward Longstreet, with his reform campaign and his promise of reviving the Alstat, and suddenly Harker loses. He’s on the outs. He’s got no money, no connections, only some back channels.

“One night,” Miles says, completing the picture, “Say Boss Harker and his cronies learn about the electioneering. They finger the very guy who did it: Hadrada Varnag. All of a sudden, they have a face they can put on their loss. They’re all out of power now, they’re angry, they have all this money rattling around and nothing to do with it except buy Jurdicium investigations and push people into presses.”

Dolora thought about it. Yeah, that works as a motive. She couldn’t see any Stadt’s Attorney ever prosecuting a case like that, but she knew better. The worst crimes never saw the light of any courtroom in the New Territories. The very worst crimes were hidden away to fester in the darkness, to grow mold and slime, until they were forgotten.

She clicked her tongue. “I buy it.”

“Me too,” Miles agreed, “almost.”

 

Preparing a plan of attack took a long time. It was exhausting. Once again they had to go through their notes, collate, and make connections. Who did they know who might be in Harker’s pocket? Miles started with Warden Cain and the Commissioner of Constables. Dolora added the Juridicium and their bloodless lawyer, Williams. Soon, they had a sprawling network laid out in the office. They stopped to eat again, and worked into the night. They made lists of what to check at City Records. Dolora resolved to try to get the arrest records of ersatzmenn who had come back from the war on the off chance they could locate the one who had jumped Miles in Woodland. Miles, out of an abundance of caution, decided to go after the files at the Kirk headquarters in Dwarfside one more time.

“If we can confirm that these two were doing something shady, buying the election somehow…”

Dolora nodded. “That’ll be proof enough to go on the Harker angle. Hell, maybe Lonstreet’s people will even help us.”

Miles tapped Harden Wilder’s name. “The Bluebell Watch is off the list. We aren’t getting any help from them.”

“So’s the Juridicium.”

“It’s just up to us, then.”

That wasn’t so different from every other case Dolora had ever worked. Gumshoe, it’s up to you. Bluebells didn’t want to solve crime, or even prevent it. They wanted to get a paycheck and avoid sticking their nose in dangerous business that might reach out and tweak it. If you wanted to make the grade and move up in the world, you might even need to look the other way a few times. It helped if you took a few bribes, did some private security for the well-to-dos, showed your face at banquets and balls, that kind of thing. None of that had ever appealed to Dolora. Hence, working alone.

She was thinking about this loneliness as she walked home. It had been alleviated, in part, through her partnership with Miles. Spade and Kowalski together were something different than either of them apart. She knew this.

Miles and Dolora had divided up the files and each gone about the laborious process of sorting their work. When they were done, Miles must have sensed that loneliness mantling her like a coat. “You can come home with me, if you want. Don’t give me that look, I mean to the family. They’re from the old country. You know how they are.”

She did. Dolora had met the Kowalski’s on occasion. They sometimes brought Miles pork kotlet in bread, pierogi, and kielbasa. She thought they were cute, those two shuffling trolls of towering size muttering in their Dvangar dialect, but she couldn’t imagine spending a whole night in their tiny house at the edge of the hills. From the way Miles talked about it, with its tar-paper roof and clapboard walls, she imagined it as one of those little homesteads at the edge of the Territories, shaken by wind and lightning, standing on the edge of some vast plain. It wasn’t like that, she knew, but it didn’t hurt to imagine it. Pierogis on the very border of the wilds.

The Alstat streets were mostly lit by gas lamps. Fulminating power wasn’t fully integrated into every day life here yet. One out of every five buildings wasn’t even wired up. Things were worse on Iron Island, Dolora had seen that first hand. Strange, that the places nearest the Orcland plant were the least likely to have reliable power service. This meant the pavement was lit by flickering, changeable light. No white orbs like in Silver City cast their faerie glow over the alleys and sidewalks. At least there is light. In Orcland there weren’t even gas lamps. That brought back Dotti and her john, struggling in the dark.

Dolora wove through the shadows toward her apartment. As she ambled through the dark, she considered the fragments of the puzzle that had taken shape. They didn’t have enough to make an outline. They barely had enough to have an inkling. Miles was sure it was all Boss Harker, but Dolora didn’t know. It could just as easily be Longstreet. At this point of most investigations, she had a feeling about who did what. Here… it was just a blank. The shards were shifting, but nothing coalesced, nothing resolved into a clear image. She whistled tunelessly and rolled a freshly-made bidi between her fingers.

A block away, she saw the light on. Is that my window? But the flower box gave it away. That was her apartment. Someone was using her power. She flattened into a doorway and touched off her bidi. The sweet smell of nasvy comforted her as she thought. Every so often she peeked out from the doorpost and glared at her building.

Her first instinct was to run. That was what Miles would do. She heard his voice in her head telling her it was better to be a live coward than a dead hero. She could go meet his little old parents for dinner. Even if they yelled at her for being late, she would still be alive. Her second instinct, though, was to charge up there with her hand on her strummer. This thought resonated. Her knee ached when she thought it. That was how she knew it was the right thing to do. Like Sergeant Lusky. She dragged on her bidi hungrily. Her lungs filled with the taste of nasvy and the doorway swelled with red light. She flicked it into the gutter. “Alright, sucker,” she said, limbering her pistol.

She took the stairs with a measured gait. Well before she reached her door, the stairwell light snapped out. She hissed. The power again. Outside, other buildings were similarly dark. If Longstreet really did fix their connection as part of his revitalization program, maybe all the sneaking around with ballot boxes was worth it. Damn fools. She pulled her strummer and felt its comfortable weight. The polished wooden grip rested in her palm like it belonged there. She spun the cylinders to hear them click.

When she reached the door, she stopped. Time to do the shamus thing. She crouched and pressed her ear against the wood. There’s someone bumping around in there. She heard muffled swearing. The intruder was as irritated by the lack of power as she was. This would actually play in her favor. The mob button man, or whatever he was in there, would be far more hindered by the dark than she was. This was her apartment, after all. She knew it like the… well, not like the back of her hand, but like the side of her ass, which you see every once and a while in the mirror. She could navigate in the darkness. He, she prayed to Correis, couldn’t.

She slipped off her shoes. Her key, she placed carefully and quietly as she could into the lock without ever relaxing her grip on the strummer. Oh, I’ll give you a little tune, she thought, caressing the cold metal with her index finger. I hope it’s a mage. That would make her night. Magicians were allergic to base metals. And everyone’s allergic to lead. Stopping a magician in her quarters would feel good in a way she had trouble describing. She’d seen too many in the Aonrijk, on both sides.

Still, best not to fire if she could help it. The pragmatic reasons: it would give away her position and she might miss, if she hit she might have to answer to a murder prosecution, and worst of all it might deprive her of a potential witness with information. Dolora was not happy to hear these warnings in Miles’ voice. I can still use it to make a credible threat, she thought, and then swept the door open.

Her first thought was that they had sent a woman to kill her. The voice cursing in the dark belonged not to a gruff button man but to some kind of gonif moll. The door had opened noiselessly. The black interior of the apartment was indistinguishable from the black interior of the stairwell. The moon was hidden behind a mountain of cloud cover, and the stars were likewise obscured. The only light came from the gas lamps below, always burning even when the power went out. The red glow played across the ceiling, illuminating the wood recesses and their faded white paint. It was like a scene out of a cathedral’s hellscape, beckoning: the Stygian ink spilled across the floor, lakes of the stuff swallowing her furniture. The swearing compounded the scene, playing a counterpoint to the clicking of the clock at her bedside.

The killer wasn’t in the living room. Dolora and Miles could afford, at their salaries, something slightly more glamorous than the living situation enjoyed by the late Mr. Varnag and his compatriots. Dolora’s apartment had rooms and was her own, not shared with anyone. It didn’t have a fulminating power meter inside that you had to put coins in: she paid by the month, like a respectable citizen. The front room boasted not one but two outdated couches, a little pot-belly stove, three radiators, and a dining table. There was an attached kitchen and two bedrooms beyond. Before they had become intimate Kit had used the other bedroom. Now it was a home-office, stacked with the relics of old cases. She had a water closet with a claw-foot bathtub and a flush toilet, and all.

Where was the dame? Did she have a six-string or a knife? Maybe it was a garrotte. Dolora moved carefully into the front room. The floorboards gave the smallest sigh as her weight crossed the threshold. The bathroom. A strummer, then. The only reason to wait in the bathroom was to blast her through the door when she got close.

Dolora got low, instead. She crouched down as far as she could, then crab-walked into the hall. Yeah, that moll is for sure in the bathroom. She could hear the voice cursing and fumbling with the window-latch. Trying to get out, I guess. Can’t do her job in the dark. Some assassin.

The part of her that listened to Miles told her to call out in warning. The part of her that did things her way and got her kicked off the Watch told her to bust through the bathroom door, shatter the lock if it was locked, and tackle the intruder. She listened to her heart and her knee, not her partner.

Turned out the door wasn’t locked, so she plowed through it like a freight train through an ox-cart. The willowy figure of the assassin, limned in alley gas light, crumpled as she struck it. Both women went down in a tangle. The intruder’s side knocked badly against the steam radiator below the window as they toppled. Dolora struck her bad knee, then her arm, then her forehead against the lip of the tub. They thrashed there for a moment, both trying to get purchase. The woman was screaming something that sounded like “No, no, help!” which Dolora’s brain, stuck as it was in the animal mode of a fight to the death, couldn’t make sense of. She battered at her assailant until the other woman put both arms above her head.

They both panted in the dark. Dolora’s chest was heaving with exertion. She could feel the other woman’s breath hot on her throat. “Don’t move,” she whispered.

Dolora held her pistol in both hands, pointed right at the assassin’s head. She was bruised and hurting, but she could still pull the trigger if she had to. Think of this moll as an Aonrijk soldier. C’mon, you! You’ve done it before! You can do it again. It was different to plug someone in a metal helmet who had been shooting back moments before. It was different in the pine-scented mountains of Aon than it was on the tile floor of her own bathroom. Still, she would do what she had to.

“D-Dolora?” the voice asked.

Dolora gasped. “Kit!”

The power came back with a sudden gush of force and the bathroom lights sprang to life. It was Kit, all bashed up, under Dolora’s shins and knees. Correis! I almost—! She lowered her pistol and slumped down on Kit’s body, small and hard beneath her.

Kit wrapped her arms around Dolora’s waist like iron wire. “Correis and Artax, what were you thinking?” she breathed. Her breath smelled of nasvy and cloves.

“Thought you were… assassin… from Iron Island…” Dolora huffed. She couldn’t stop a nervous laugh from slipping in at the end.

Kit held her tighter. “No, kid, not an assassin. Just your Kit. You been gone almost a week already. No word, no nothing! I used my key…”

Dolora threw her pistol in the tub and hugged her Kit back. “Correis, Correis, Correis, at least I didn’t hit you with the strummer,” she whispered. The tears in her voice soon found their escape and coursed in free flow into Kit’s hair. Her cloche hat was crumpled by the radiator. “Did I hurt you? Did I hurt you?” she asked.

“No, no more than… No, no.” She paused. “You hurt me when you ran away. Again.”

Dolora recoiled. Ah, the wound.

“Where did you go, Dolora? I’ve been trying to find you.” That was no small thing for Kit Winter. She had connections in Silver City. Dolora turned away.

“Iron Island.”

Kit’s lips tightened.

Later, when they were cleaned up and showered and most of their bruises had been rubbed and treated, Dolora and Kit sat cuddled up near the phonograph drinking tea. Kit had changed into a silk nightgown and Dolora wore a soft robe.

As the hiss of the needle presaged the coming of a new song, Kit said, “You went back there.” Dolora said nothing. “Correis, Dolora! You went back to Iron Island. Why? You know he’s not there. He hasn’t been there for years.”

He. McTavish. John McTavish, the former Member of Parliament and Cavalier ward boss on the Island. “I know.”

Kit twisted to look at her. “You can’t get him. He’s outside your reach. He’s the Chief Officer at Cinder City Consolidated, now. He’s on the board of Credit Mobilier, for the Fabricator’s sake! His friends run up and down Parliament Island. For the love of all that’s holy, Dolora, he’s got a seat at the Cavalier Convention and he’s personal friends with Drake Harker. You can’t arrest him! You can’t dig up a case on him! And even if you could, you could never convince the Juridicium to prosecute!”

John McTavish. Dolora felt the bile rising in her throat. John McTavish. John McTavish. John McTavish. This wasn’t about McTavish, this was something else; this case had nothing to do with him! But his ghost, though he still lived, cast a shade through her whole life. Kit would never forgive her for spoiling her career in the Blues by chasing McTavish, would never forgive her for running away to fight in the War after.

“He killed that girl,” she exploded. “He raped her and he killed her. That little piano girl. No one gave a shit because who cares about some Alkebulan music-hall floozy from Orcland, but he killed her.”

She didn’t want to argue about this. It was pointless. She knew she wasn’t going to get McTavish. This wasn’t about McTavish. This was about Longstreet and Harker and a Watch sergeant named Krasky. But it always came back to that Fabricator-damned case, because it was her last. She’d risked everything, and lost. And Kit would never ever forget that.

The needle kept hissing. The record had missed its groove.

Kit stared back at her with sullen eyes. Dolora turned her face away. “That’s not why I was there. It was for this case Miles and I are working.”

“The Varnag case.”

She nodded but couldn’t say anything else. Because how was the Varnag case different from the Margeurite Arbois murder? Even Miles thought the perpetrator was on the Cavalier Convention: Harker. That would no more put Kit at ease than if Dolora admitted she had been back on Iron Island looking for a link to McTavish. Just like she couldn’t tell Kit that Aniello Marcone wanted McTavish for other crimes. So instead they sat in silence until Dolora heard something outside.

It sounded like chanting, distant but tremendously loud.

She sat up.

Kit looked at her. “What?”

“You don’t hear that?”

Dolora went to the window, opened it. The chants drifted in from Granite street. There were people out there calling into the night!

Power, they said.

Power, Light, Water! Power to the People! Light to the People! Water! Power! Power to the People! Power!

Across the street someone unfurled a red banner. Slashed across its heart in white paint was the Cog gear.

Dolora and Kit stared into the dark as the commonists marched through it.

 

Miles finished his coffee and bagel on the sidewalk in front of the Kirk party headquarters. He pushed aside a discarded red banner with the toe of his loafer. Commonists had dropped it last night running from the Watch. They should have planned their march for the Stadtprasident’s speech. As it was, they had been little more than a distant dream to anyone not out in the middle of the night. They may have woken up some geriatrics, but that was all.

Miles had to deal with them because they snarled traffic while he was coming back from Mama I Tata’s house. He often wondered if they wouldn’t have been commonists if they’d left south Dvangar earlier. They told stories of the Autark and his tax men, hatchet men, noose men, and pistol men. There were thousands of Colsci leaving Dvangar when they were young. That was what Miles’ people were called, the Colsci from the defunct kingdom of Colam, which had been exchanged back and forth between Dvangar and Aon for centuries until at last becoming an appendage of the great Dvangrish Empire under the Autark. But if they had stayed for the great uprising in the city of Varclav they might have joined it. They might have flocked round the red banner and hefted the grain-and-gears of the Commonwealth of Guilds high above the city with the other Colsci. As it was, they viewed commonists with a mixture of admiration and suspicion.

Before he went in, Miles lit a cigar and eyed the late-spring sky. A spatter of rain over the channel and threats of downpour later in the afternoon. Good thing he wore a trench coat.

There was something like a real staff on that morning. Miles was happy to see the typist in the corner didn’t appear to be the highest ranking muckity-muck in the joint. An elderly dwarf was speaking with a priest and both had the air of important officials. Miles ignored the typist and waited out the priest, who gave a friendly nod on his way back to the street. The old dwarf inclined his head, motioning for Miles to have a seat at the table they shared.

“Morgan,” the dwarf said, Miles didn’t know how to respond. “Morgan, morning. How can I help you, I mean.” His voice was thick with some Dvangrish sludge that stuck in his throat like hot oil.

Miles sat and chewed on his cigar for a moment, thinking. The dwarf seemed to approve of this methodical approach to conversation and stirred powdered nasvy into his coffee. “I’m hoping for some help. My name is Miles Kowalski and I work for the city.” He produced his shamus license, a folded sheet of thick paper stuck in his wallet. He flashed it. “I’m a shamus.” Just a little lie. He glanced at the typist in the back. She was still seated by the filing cabinet.

“Ahhh, yes,” the dwarf agreed. “Mr. Kowalski. My name is Shmuel Itzvak.” He inclined his head and made a gesture of welcome. “I run this office in the absence of our friend Mr. Adelaide.”

Miles grunted. “Who’s that, if I can ask?”

“That Sacramentalist priest you just saw leave,” Itzvak said. “I suppose you would call him ‘Father’ Adelaide. He is a good man. For a Sacramentalist.”

“And what are you?” Miles asked with some measure of amusement.

The dwarf chuckled deep in his throat, a sound like crushing gravel. “What am I, what am I, boy-child? What do you think? Of course, I’m a Fid.” He gave Miles a curious look. “You’ve met a Fid before, have you not?”

“I’ve spent my whole life in Dwarfside,” Miles said, “I’d be a fool or a hermit if I’d never met one.”

“Well, you might not always recognize a Fid from afar,” Itzvak warned. A Fid meant a Fideraine, one of the dwarves who followed the words of the prophets only. Fids were not hard to find in Dwarfside. There had always been lots of them on the Continent and in the border regions of Dvangar. They were a kind of Fabricationist that was so distinct from Revelationists and Sacramentalists engouh to qualify as their own faith. In fact, at the end of the war, it had been revealed in Cinder City that the Aonrijk was… but no, better not to think about that. This dwarf, Mr. Itzvak, wouldn’t want to talk about that horrific tragedy.

Miles tapped a tusk. “No, I suppose not. But believe me, Mr. Itzvak, I’ve spent a lot of time with your people. Mostly dwarves, which makes sense I suppose. The prophets were all dwarves, no?” This was true, and Miles was actually well-accepted in Fiddish circles. He knew his way around the Fiddish faith, and even the culture.

“That’s so, that’s so. Well, how can I help you? I can’t say I’ve ever met a shamus in person before. What help can an old dwarf be?”

Miles was hesitant to dive straight to the heart of the matter. He’d already wasted one chance to pry through the Kirk files. It’ll go better if the dwarf and I develop an understanding.

“Well, you cut straight to the chase, Mr. Itzvak.” The Fiddish dwarves Miles knew would prefer to spend twenty minutes complaining about their various aches and pains than dive in to business right away. How are you was a question that could be answered in thirty-six parts, with each course mounting on the last, to construct a towering mansion of throbbing backs, scratchy throats, sick grandchildren, and eyes that no glasses could put right. “The thing of it is, I need to know who worked with Hadrada Varnag when he worked here. He was Fiddish too, if I’m not mistaken.” Miles didn’t know that, but it was a fair bet. After all, Varnag had been Dvangrish, lived in Dwarfside, and involved with union and commonist politics. It wasn’t enough to spell FIDDISH on the pavement, but it was certainly enough to guess at FI-.

“Oh, yes. Nebekh a poor dwarf should come to such an end. And for his Varda, too,” Itzvak said. “But if you know my people, Mr. Kowalski, you’ll also know it is bad luck to speak of the dead. They might come when you call their name.”

Miles had heard this superstition, along with a few others. “We wouldn’t want to wake him up from the other world. I’ll be more circumspect, kinahore.” Kinahore, Fiddish for “no evil eye,” as in, let the dark spirits look the other way.

This took Itzvak into a fit of chuckles. “So it’s true, you do know a thing or two. I suppose with a name like Kowalski…”

“I’m bound to have a Fid somewhere in my family tree,” Miles laughed. Another common saying among the Fiddish. If your people were from the edge of Aon or Dvangar and you had a Colsci surname… chances are someone, somewhere, was a Fid. “So I was hoping to get a look at your records. See if I can make heads or tails of it. Maybe something in there would help.”

“For a brother of Colam looking into the death of a nebekh shretl, of course!”

Itzak was overjoyed to take Miles through the files. The typist, if she saw them, pretended not to notice the Return of Mr. Kowalski.

He spent the better part of the afternoon reading between the lines. Comparing them to what he knew of the Cavalier election tactics (and, as a former Watch officer, he knew quite a bit) he was surprised by how widespread the graft appeared to be. There were drivers on the rolls paid as transporters. There were counts and recounts in every Ward of Alstat, Centrum Hills, and Shipston. Iron Island reported half the number of votes they had in the previous election (the one where Boss Harker had confirmed his “mandate” to remain Stadtprasident for his fifth term).

Miles had been there himself on what were called “dump and stuff” missions run by the Cavaliers. A local Cavalier boss, like John MacTavish, would stop by to chat with the Watch Chief. The Chief would assign some local good old boys to walk down to the polling place, jam some ballot boxes full of Harker votes, and destroy the others. Miles had been on a bully-boy squad for two of Harker’s elections when he was running against far more moderate Kirks than the fiery Longstreet. By the time Longstreet was in the running, just six months ago, Miles had been off the force for years. It was the first time he’d actually voted in an election, and he hoted against Harker. He liked Longstreet. The man was an Alstat native born and bred and promised to change things. That was important. The people needed a change.

For years, the Cavaliers had assured him and his fellow officers that the Kirks were cheating at the elections. Now he was looking the proof right in the face. He scanned the records of the elections prior. It looked like they never had a real united plan… until Longstreet came along. During the Longstreet campaign, Kirk malfeasance was professionalized. The party started hiring people on the regular and requesting “men and women of discretion” from the combines. Itzvak had accidentally let Miles into a gold mine! That nebekh dwarf and his priest friend probably had no idea what the file archive contained, or maybe they just thought Miles lacked the other intelligence to put it together. Itzvak certainly must not have known about Dolora and Miles jumping Ephraim a few nights ago. With the information from Ephraim and Johnson, the Trist connection, and now this…

 Longstreet’s campaign had fought tooth and nail against the older Kirks. When they won, this Father Adelaid had started issuing new directives to the Kirk local offices. They assembled the combine volunteers into two-person teams and assigned them, in every case, an autotruck. The teams were payed for a few hours and went from polling place to polling place on the day of the elections… these had to be dump and stuff missions, just like the ones Miles had done for the Cavaliers. It was all coming together. Varnag and Trist were a team. They were working for the campaign to dispose of unfavorable ballot boxes. No wonder Longstreet won! The Kirks were finally playing as dirty as their opponents.

In his heart, Miles knew this was related to the case. It pained him, even made him feel short of breath. He was sitting at a desk in the back of the office, a few seats behind the typist, with stacks of Kirk records in front of him. Itzvak had long since lost interest in the search and returned to his own business on the far side of the room. Miles loosened his tie and rubbed his forehead. The thing of it was, Longstreet was a good man. An gute mensch, as Itzvak might say. He couldn’t bring himself to believe the prasident was actually aware of all the shit people were wading through for him down in Alstat.

He needed to be elected. He’s going to save the old city, bring stable power, water, and heat to Dwarfside. Decades since the Steam Riots, and these things were still going on. Only Prasident Longstreet could overcome the moneyed interests who were blocking it. Cinder City Consolidated didn’t want to rebuild its steam lines. It didn’t want the Alstat residents. But the Alstat residents had forced it to build here. Varnag had been part of that. He must have known, better than anyone, the power of having a prasident who was on the side of the little guy.

In the early afternoon, when his stomach started complaining like a rusty lokomotive, Miles thanked Itzak and packed up his notebooks. He was headed out to grab something to eat, preferably at one of the little Fiddish delis—He’d gotten a hankering for Colsci food spending so much time talking to Itzvak. Half way there, his head still swimming with the knowledge that Longstreet’s ward bosses had been party to the same kind of base bullshit that he himself had done for Harker, he realized he was being followed again. It wasn’t the same person as before; this was a slender woman who kept darting her eyes up to look at him. She was an elf. Pale, green eyes, and… Well, well. She’s wearing department issue boots. Dumb mistake. Must be a rookie. The Watch didn’t want to risk a hireling this time, so they sent some green rook. He’d show her what happens when you try to follow an old hnd in the shadowing game.

But then she got off the streetwagon three stops before his and he decided he must have been mistaken. The wagon started up again and he looked out to see if she was giving instructions to another tail. But no, there she was, on the corner, hair done up in finger curls, and… She’s still staring at me. Why?

He knew when he heard the squeal of the wagon brakes. Sparks flew as the brakewire snapped and twanged across the tracks. The wagon wouldn’t slow. An intersection came and went. Now the wagon was filled with screaming. Children wept openly in their mothers arms. Young men shouted and waved their caps, trying to flag down help from someone, anyone, heedless of the fact that no one could rush to stop the plummeting streetwagon as it sailed down Granite. We’re going to hit something, Miles realized. It would be an autowagon collision, most likely. He gripped the iron rail of his seat and felt the panels flex beneath him as he strained for dear life.

The last thing he thought before the accident was, Commissioner Wilder is behind this.

 

The wreck was intended to injure or kill Miles. He didn’t intend to let that happen. The metal brake lines that plunged the pads onto the wheels were broken, so the trolley wouldn’t stop. That didn’t mean there was no way to bring it to a halt.

“Help me!” Miles shouted, wrenching at the seat. It took a moment for the passengers to understand, but the driver saw what he was doing and screamed for the others to help. Soon, a small crowd of streewtagon passengers had banded together to rock the bench back and forth. The bolts groaned. The pins shivered. With a horrendous squeal, they tore it free from its mooring. “Through the window!” Miles bellowed. The men in flat caps and angry women in serge skirts heaved the bench against the glass. It shattered and fell like a rain of ice chips. “Wait, wait!” Miles breathed. Autowagons scrambled to avoid the trolley as it barreled down Granite Street. They would hit an intersection any minute. “We have to get the wheels to run over it. We have to slow the wagon down!”

Miles was sweating. His pulse hammered on his head in time with the pneumatic drill-hammers down the street. He glanced back and saw the open pit of Cinder City Consolidated workmen, their heads and shoulders just above the level of the street as they hammered on the steam lines. His arms ached as he swung the bench around and felt rather than heard it clatter against the side of the streetwagon. He felt it slipping out of his hands. “Steady!” he thundered. The big cross-street where Granite joined Limestone was less than a block away. “Hold it steady!” Suddenly, it swung wide into the street. An autowagon swerved around it, horn blasting aoogah frantically.

With a huge heave, Miles hauled the bench back against the side of the car. It smashed into the wood, chipping paint and scraping the gilding. The rail buckled the whole seat slithered down toward the surface of the road. “Here we go!” Miles groaned, unable to hold it any longer. His muscles were aflame.

All of a sudden, the bench kissed the asphalt and it was pulled from Miles’ hands. He let go fast as he could, lest he be sucked out the window with it and split his skull on the sharp edge of the wagon’s wheel. The steel ground on against the track, heedless, until the bench exploded into it. Miles hung limp from the frame of the shattered window. As the rim fo the wheel, the part that met the track in the road, collided with metal and wood, it left the track and the entire rear of the streetwagon flew into the air with a jolt. Miles tumbled backward into the wagon. The crowd was smashed together by the force of the jolt, everyone colliding with everyone else like pool balls on a too-small felt. While it was in the air, the wagon slewed hard to the right. The rear wheels left the tracks and smashed back into the roadway with a tremendous, explosive, clatter.

When they hit the asphalt, the wheels locked. Twin curtains of sparks turned the streetwagon into a comet as it careened down Granite Street, its rear axle carving a wandering rut into the road as it swayed left and right across the tracks, unable to find purchase. Still, the road itself slowed the mad progress of the wagon. It ground to a halt a quarter of the block up from the intersection, where autowagons and autotrucks had already stopped to gape at the sight.

Miles rose from the ground where he’d been stepped on by a heavyset orc for the last terrifying seconds, and tried to shake the feeling of certain doom that had washed over him. He was dripping with sweat. Every inch of his clothing adhered to his body. “Well,” he said quietly. “That was quite a ride.”

No one laughed.

 

“It’s the commissioner!” Miles exploded. “It’s got to be. He’s trying to kill me. We’re on to something here, Dolora, and it isn’t some run-of-the-mill nothing. It’s not a jealous lover or an angry co-worker, or anything like that. The Jurdicium sticks its nose in, runs its parallel investigation, that’s strange. But when I go to see Hardin and suddenly there are spooks on every side following me around, trying to throw me off the trail, trying to ice me on the public streets, that’s more than strange. The Bluebell Watch is in on this somehow. Krasky, that sergeant. What does he have to do with things? Why’d he attack me in the parking lot? And, and, Dolora, the electioneering shit. It’s all wrapped up together. Tyrsis Trist just happens to work with Hadrada Varnag fixing the election for Longstreet. Then, six months later, Varnag gets pushed in a press hammer and Trist gets offed inside the Pen. He fought off one hired killer, did you hear that? A mob assassin that worked for your orc Marcone. He killed him with a broom handle. Then someone else smothers him in his sleep?

“It’s a conspiracy!”

“Ok, so it’s a conspiracy,” Dolora agreed. “But a conspiracy to do what? Why would Longstreet suddenly care about these two guys? He had other people working on his campaign. What about that priest, Adelaide? How come he’s still around?”

Miles shook his head. They were back in their offices. By now, he’d had a chance to come down from the delirious high of the streetwagon accident. He still felt shaky, like his arms and legs were wet noodles and his noggin was a ten-ton bowling ball.

“Something’s going on in this city, kid,” Miles warned. “I always knew it was corrupt, but hell! It’s like an open sewer. Can’t you smell it? The stench is like to bring tears to your eyes. Georn, Artax, Correis, and Karzel!” he thundered, spitting the names of the Four Fabricators all at once in the most powerful curse in the Sacramentalist creed. “How do we do it? Every day we have to wade through their shit and turn our noses up like it isn’t happening. Yet somehow, you say something to someone and they act offended, like Cinder City isn’t as thick with mold and slime growing on its underbelly as every damn place.”

Miles was spiraling out of control. He wasn’t used to that feeling. He didn’t often feel the world had gotten away from him, and he didn’t like it. But he couldn’t stop himself. He had to rant, to scream. He felt like Dolora, and he could tell from her slight smirk that she thought she was finally rubbing off on him.

But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it! He’d spent his whole life in service to these people, doing their dirty work. Maybe he hadn’t done it happily, but he’d done it. He’d gone through everything and carried it all out, done the graft, rigged elections, told folks it was better to be quiet than right, got good paperwork lost in the shuffle because his bosses had told him it was the thing to do. He kept his head down the whole time. What was he, just one fat orc from the Alstat, going to do about the way things were run? Nothing. He could do his part in the Watch, get paid, get out, and retire a happy man.

They were supposed to give back. They owed the people of Cinder City something. They owed them… well, he didn’t know what, exactly, but something! They (and here “they” meant everyone, the people in charge, the bigwigs in the mansions and the prasidents on Parliament Island and the financial warlords in Silver City, it meant all the players) were supposed to give back in exchange for all this. Sure, there was a little graft and a little slime, but that was the price. You bought things in exchange for that. You were supposed to buy… a functioning state, one that didn’t murder the people that worked for it. You were… “We’re gonna get these people,” he said at last.

“Yeah,” Dolora nodded. “We are. Let’s go get some coffee.”

As she rose, Miles paced to the window and looked through the slats. “No,” he said. He made no effort to be small or unoffending. He was large, he was angry, and he wouldn’t be moved. “No, it’s not safe. D, don’t you understand? I was followed all day and now they tried to kill me. This isn’t going to go away. I can’t just go wherever I want.”

Dolora hesitated. “You stay in the Alstat, then. You said this priest was in charge of the Kirk office, right?”

“Adelaide.”

“Good. You can go see him. I doubt our old boss is going to have you offed in a church.”

“What are you going to do?”

Dolora sat on Miles’ desk. “I’m going back to Iron Island,” she said. With a flick of her hand, she lit her bidi. “I’ve got a Blue sergeant to see.”

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