Low Town (25 page)

“I guess there are a lot of kids in Low Town, huh?”

“I guess.”

“Why him?”

“Why indeed?”

I had been to Meskie’s house once or twice, dropping things off for Adeline. She’d always invited me in for a cup of coffee, insisted really. Her home was small but well kept, and her children were unflaggingly polite. I tried to conjure up an image of Avraham in my mind, but nothing would come. I might have passed him the day before and not known it, one more offering to She Who Waits Behind All Things from her most devout congregation.

If Avraham had been dead, his home would be packed with mourners, weeping women and mounds of fresh-cooked food. As he was only missing, the neighborhood didn’t know how to respond, the usual gestures of sympathy premature. The only people outside Meskie’s were her five daughters standing clumped together. They looked up at me in dumb silence.

“Hi, girls. Is your mother inside?”

The eldest nodded, her jet-black hair bobbing up and down.

“She’s in the kitchen.”

“Boy, wait out here with Mrs. Mayana’s girls. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Wren looked uncomfortable. Domesticated children were a separate species to him, their trivial games unfathomable. He’d never be able to fake their easy camaraderie. The trials of his childhood had marked him as other, and the status quo has no more rigorous champion than the adolescent.

But he’d have to endure it for a few minutes. This business was subtle enough without a teen at my side.

I knocked lightly but didn’t get a response, so I let myself in. It was dark, the wall sconces unlit and the front shades drawn. A short hallway led into the kitchen, and I saw Meskie leaning over her wide kitchen table, dark flesh spread like an ink spot over the sanded wood. I cleared my throat loudly, but she either didn’t hear or chose not to respond.

“Hi, Meskie.”

She inclined her head slightly. “It’s nice to see you again,” she said, her tone suggesting the contrary. “But I’m afraid I can’t do any washing today.” Despair wore heavy on her face, but her eyes were clear and her voice steady.

I mustered up the courage to continue. “I’ve been looking into some of the things going on in the neighborhood the last few weeks.” She didn’t answer. Fair enough. I was the interloper—it was time to put some cards on the table. “I was the one who found Tara. Did you know that?”

She shook her head.

I tried to think of an explanation for why I was banging on her door before noon, a virtual stranger violating the bounds of intimacy to pimp her for information about a child likely dead. “We’ve got to look out for our own as best we can.” It sounded more puerile out loud than it had echoing through my skull.

Slowly she slid her eyes up to mine, not saying anything. Then she turned away and muttered, “They sent an agent around. He asked me about Avraham. He took my statement.”

“The ice will do what they can. But they don’t hear everything that I hear, and they aren’t always listening.” That was about as much as I could say for Black House. “I’m trying to find out if there was some common thread connecting Avraham and the other children, something about him that stood out, something unique …” I trailed off feebly.

“He’s quiet,” she answered. “He doesn’t talk much, not like the girls. Some days he wakes up early and helps me with the wash. He likes being up before the rest of the city, says it helps him hear things better.” She shook her head, the colored beads set in her hair trailing back and forth. “He’s my son—what do you want me to say?”

That was a fair enough answer, I supposed. Only a fool would ask a mother what made her child special. Every freckle on his face, as
far as she was concerned, but that wouldn’t do me much good. “I’m sorry, that was tactless. But I need to understand why Avraham …” It was hard to gauge how imprecise a euphemism I should insert here. “Why Avraham might have gone missing.”

She choked an answer back down in her throat. I followed up with what finesse I could muster.

“You were going to say something. What was it?”

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Sometimes we know more than we think. Why don’t you tell me what you were going to say.”

Her body seemed to expand and contract with every breath, like the only thing keeping her upright was the air in her lungs. “Sometimes he’d know things that he couldn’t have known about, things about his daddy, other things, things I had never told him, things nobody could have. I’d ask him how he found out, but he’d just smile that queer smile of his and … and …” Her composure, firm as stone up to this point, broke, utterly. She buried her face in her hands and wept with all the force of her matronly body. I tried to think of some way to calm her but failed—empathy was never my stock in trade.

“You’ll save him, won’t you? The guard can’t do anything, but you’ll bring him back to me, won’t you?” She took me by the wrist, and her grip was strong. “I’ll give you whatever you want, I’ll pay you anything, whatever I have, please—just find my boy!”

I pried her fingers off as delicately as I could. It was beyond me to tell a mother she wouldn’t see her child alive again—but I wouldn’t lie either, put my name in hock to a promise I’d never redeem. “I’ll do what I can.”

Meskie was not a fool—she knew what that meant. She set her hands in her lap, ending her despondency by sheer force of will. “Of course,” she said, “I understand.” Her face had that terrible calm that comes when hope lies buried. “He’s in Śakra’s hands now.”

“We all are,” I said, though I doubted it would help poor Avraham
any more than it did the rest of us. I thought about leaving her some coin but didn’t want to insult her. Adeline would come around later with some food, though Meskie wouldn’t need it. The Islanders were a tight community—she’d be provided for.

Wren was waiting for me outside, clumped with Meskie’s daughters, but easy enough to pick out. Contra their mother’s description they were very quiet. “It’s time to go.”

Wren turned toward the girls. “I’m sorry,” he said. They were probably his first words since I’d left.

The youngest burst into tears and ran inside.

Wren blushed and started to apologize, but I put my hand on his shoulder and he shut his mouth. We walked back to the Earl in our customary silence, though somehow it seemed quieter.

I dropped the kid off and headed out to see Yancey. The more I mulled over last night’s conversation with Beaconfield, the less I liked it. He knew where I slept—there was nothing I could do there. But if the Blade decided to move on me, he’d go through the Rhymer first, and that was a possibility I might have a hand in affecting.

I knocked lightly on the door. After a moment it opened, revealing Yancey’s mother, an Islander in her mid-fifties, aging but handsome, her brown eyes smiling and vital. “Good morning, Mrs. Dukes. A pleasure to see you again after such a protracted absence.” There was something about Ma Dukes that brought out the courtier in me.

She waved off my compliment and moved to embrace me. Then she pushed me away lightly, holding my wrists with her long-fingered hands.

“Why haven’t you been round to see me lately? You found yourself a girl?”

“Busy with work—you know how it is.”

“I know all about your kind of work. And why are you so formal all of a sudden?”

“No more deference than is due so revered a matriarch.”

She laughed and ushered me inside.

Yancey’s home was warm and bright, regardless of the season. The Islanders were renowned as the greatest sailors of the Thirteen Lands, and they served more than their quota in the Imperial Navy. True to form, her eldest took the Queen’s copper and was at sea nine months of the year, but even an occupant short the house still seemed crowded, overflowing with bric-a-brac acquired from foreign ports and Yancey’s collection of drums and curious, hand-carved instruments. Ma Dukes led me into her kitchen and motioned toward a stool at the table.

“You eat already?” she asked, spooning me a plate from the steaming mass of bubbling pots and pans on the stove.

I hadn’t actually, not that it mattered. Lunch was fried fish and vegetables, and I tore into it with relish. Her duties as a host fulfilled, Ma Dukes eased herself into the chair across from mine. “Good, huh?”

I mumbled something affirmative through a mouthful of onions and peppers.

“It’s a new recipe. I got it from a friend of mine, Esti Ibrahim.”

I shoveled another piece of cod into my maw. It never failed—somewhere along the line Ma Dukes had become convinced that all my troubles stemmed from the absence of an Island woman to share my bed and cook my meals, and was determined to make good this lack. It made visits a bit exhausting.

“Widowed, lovely hair. You could do a lot worse.”

“I’m not sure if I’m the most stable bet right now. Remind me next time you see me.”

She shook her head with something approaching disappointment. “You in trouble again? Always gotta stir the pot, by the Firstborn. Smirk all you want, you aren’t a child. Closer my age than Yancey’s, am I wrong?”

I hoped that wasn’t true, though it might have been.

“He’s on the roof.” She slapped my arm with a damp dishrag. “Tell him lunch is ready when he wants it.” Her eyes turned steely. “He stays out of anything you’re into—don’t forget you’re a guest in my home.”

I kissed her lightly on the cheek and made my way upstairs.

Yancey’s house buttresses the Beggar’s Ramparts, a steep canyon that acts as de facto divide between the Islanders and the white citizens of the docks. At ground level the crevasse was filled with trash, and the sight of it would belie the suggestion that the divide was a positive addition to the landscape—but from on high the break from the skyline it offered was actually quite soothing. When I came up the Rhymer was lighting a banana leaf stuffed with dreamvine. We shared the blunt and the view for a few quiet moments.

“I need two favors,” I began.

Yancey had one of the best laughs I’d ever heard, rich and full. His whole body shook with mirth. “You’ve got a way of beginning a conversation.”

“I’m quite the charmer,” I acknowledged. “First, I need someone who can give me the word on Beaconfield.”

“Ain’t me, man, I only met him twice now.” He smiled conspiratorially and his voice dipped an octave. “Besides, it ain’t wise for the help to pay too much attention to the master of the house, you hear true?” He breathed out a trail of smoke rings, verdant greens and bright oranges. The wind carried them south toward the harbor, the bustle of the docks vaguely discernible even at this distance. “I might know somebody, though. You ever hear of Mairi the Dark-eyed, runs a place north of downtown called the Velvet Hutch?”

“A house of worship, no doubt.”

“You bet your life on that, brother. Praise the Firstborn!” He chuckled and slapped me on the back. “Nah, man, she’s an old friend. Word is she used to be the Crown Prince’s mistress, back in the day.
Now she sells high-class tail to nobles and rich bankers, and”—he winked at me—“she’s on first names with every skeleton in every closet from here to Miradin.”

“Quite the necromancer.”

“She’s multitalented.” he confirmed. “I’ll send word that you’re coming by to see her.”

“That’s the first favor—you won’t like the second one. I need you to disappear for a little while.”

He slumped against the railing, the hog leg dangling from his lips. “Come on now, don’t tell me that.”

“Take a trip to the coast for a few days, or if you want to stay in the city go visit your Asher friends. Just keep away from your usual hangouts and don’t perform.”

“I ain’t in the mood for taking no trip, man.”

“If it’s about money …” I began.

“Ain’t about money, man. I got enough money—I don’t need to beg coin.” His eyes cut through the haze of smoke with dull ferocity. “It’s you—you fuck shit up, it’s all you ever do. You a poison—everyone you meet is worse for it, you know that? Every single person. I ain’t got no problems with nobody, then I do you a kindness and what happens?” His tone had switched from condemnation to regret. “I’m an exile in my own fucking city.” He sighed and took another hit, spewing multicolored fog into the air. “This about the Blade?”

“Yes.”

“I told you he was dangerous. Don’t you listen to anyone?”

“Probably not enough.”

“Why he after you?”

“I’m pretty sure—”

Yancey cut me off with a chop of his hand. “Never mind, man. I don’t want to know.”

That was probably for the best. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“I ain’t holding my breath.”

We leaned against the barrier for a long time afterward, passing the blunt back and forth until it was down to the roach. Finally Yancey broke the silence. “Mom try and hook you up again?”

“Esti Ibrahim, I believe her name was.”

He sucked his teeth in contemplation. “Makes the best fried fish in Rigus, but she’s got an ass like the stove you’d fry it on.”

“That was some damn good fish,” I acknowledged.

He snickered at that, and I should have joined in, as a courtesy if nothing else. But the talk with Meskie had me out of sorts, and I was finding it tough to be a cheery companion. “So you’ll talk to Mairi for me?”