out—I don’t do charity. And I don’t give a shit whereyou sleep—go nap in the Andel if you feel like it. I’m passing on an offer from the giant. You want to take it, go ahead. You don’t, I won’t remember we had this conversation tomorrow.” To prove it I went back to my drink, and after a moment he slipped off into the crowd.
I finished my meal and headed upstairs before the bar got busy. Somewhere on the walk home from the Aerie my ankle had started to ache again, and the short climb was more unpleasant than it should have been.
I lay down on the bed and rolled a long twist of dreamvine. The evening wafted in through the open window, airing out the musk. I lit the joint and thought about tomorrow’s work. What I had smelled on the body was strong, stronger than anything you’d use for cleaning a kitchen or bathroom. And a household cleaner wouldn’t be enough to throw off a decent scryer. Maybe the soap plants, or one of the glue factories with their heavy solvents. The Kirens had a monopoly on that kind of work, which was why I’d sent the boy to clear my presence with their chief. Wouldn’t do to make trouble for my real business while I was off pursuing this diversion.
I blew out the lamp and puffed ringlets of colored smoke into the air. This was a good blend, sweet to the tongue and strong against my chest, and it filled the room with threads of brass and burnt sienna. Halfway through I stubbed the tab against the underside of my bed and fell asleep, the low-grade euphoria spreading through my body sufficient distraction to drown out the noise of our patrons below.
• • •
In my dreams I was a child again, lost and homeless, my mother and father taken by the plague, my little sister crushed during the grain riots that had destroyed the remnants of civil authority three weeks earlier. That was my first fall on the streets of Low Town. When I learned to scavenge for food, to appreciate filth for the heat it releasedaround you while you slept. When I first saw the depths the average man will sink to and learned what there was to win in wading deeper.
I was in the back corner of an alley, my legs pulled tightly against myself, when I was jolted awake by their approach.
“Faggot. Hey, faggot. What you doing in our territory?” There were three of them, older than me, only by a few years but those few years would be enough. Its tendency to spare children was one of the most curious of the Red Fever’s effects—it was quite possible these were the oldest living human beings within ten square blocks.
I didn’t have a single object of value—my clothes were rags that wouldn’t have survived removal, and I’d lost my shoes at some point in the chaos of the last month. I hadn’t eaten in a day and a half and I was sleeping in a dugout I’d scraped against the walls of a side street. But they didn’t want anything from me apart from an opportunity to practice violence, our surroundings sharpening the natural cruelty of children to a fever pitch.
I pulled myself off the ground, hunger making even this exercise exhausting. The three of them sauntered over—ragged youths, their attire and appearance not much improved from my own. The speaker was a fever survivor, the angry cankers discharging from his face attesting to a barely victorious battle with the plague. Apart from that there was little to recommend him from his fellows, famine and misery rendering them almost indistinguishable, gaunt scavengers, ghouls amid the rubble.
“You’ve got some nerve, you little cocksucker, coming into our neighborhood and not even having the common decency to ask permission.”
I stood mutely. Even as a child I found the inane exchanges that preface violence to be absurd. Just get to it already.
“You ain’t got nothing to say to me?” The leader turned back toward the other two, as if shocked by my poor etiquette, then strucka blow to the side of my head that sent me spinning to the ground. I lay
I finished my meal and headed upstairs before the bar got busy. Somewhere on the walk home from the Aerie my ankle had started to ache again, and the short climb was more unpleasant than it should have been.
I lay down on the bed and rolled a long twist of dreamvine. The evening wafted in through the open window, airing out the musk. I lit the joint and thought about tomorrow’s work. What I had smelled on the body was strong, stronger than anything you’d use for cleaning a kitchen or bathroom. And a household cleaner wouldn’t be enough to throw off a decent scryer. Maybe the soap plants, or one of the glue factories with their heavy solvents. The Kirens had a monopoly on that kind of work, which was why I’d sent the boy to clear my presence with their chief. Wouldn’t do to make trouble for my real business while I was off pursuing this diversion.
I blew out the lamp and puffed ringlets of colored smoke into the air. This was a good blend, sweet to the tongue and strong against my chest, and it filled the room with threads of brass and burnt sienna. Halfway through I stubbed the tab against the underside of my bed and fell asleep, the low-grade euphoria spreading through my body sufficient distraction to drown out the noise of our patrons below.
• • •
In my dreams I was a child again, lost and homeless, my mother and father taken by the plague, my little sister crushed during the grain riots that had destroyed the remnants of civil authority three weeks earlier. That was my first fall on the streets of Low Town. When I learned to scavenge for food, to appreciate filth for the heat it releasedaround you while you slept. When I first saw the depths the average man will sink to and learned what there was to win in wading deeper.
I was in the back corner of an alley, my legs pulled tightly against myself, when I was jolted awake by their approach.
“Faggot. Hey, faggot. What you doing in our territory?” There were three of them, older than me, only by a few years but those few years would be enough. Its tendency to spare children was one of the most curious of the Red Fever’s effects—it was quite possible these were the oldest living human beings within ten square blocks.
I didn’t have a single object of value—my clothes were rags that wouldn’t have survived removal, and I’d lost my shoes at some point in the chaos of the last month. I hadn’t eaten in a day and a half and I was sleeping in a dugout I’d scraped against the walls of a side street. But they didn’t want anything from me apart from an opportunity to practice violence, our surroundings sharpening the natural cruelty of children to a fever pitch.
I pulled myself off the ground, hunger making even this exercise exhausting. The three of them sauntered over—ragged youths, their attire and appearance not much improved from my own. The speaker was a fever survivor, the angry cankers discharging from his face attesting to a barely victorious battle with the plague. Apart from that there was little to recommend him from his fellows, famine and misery rendering them almost indistinguishable, gaunt scavengers, ghouls amid the rubble.
“You’ve got some nerve, you little cocksucker, coming into our neighborhood and not even having the common decency to ask permission.”
I stood mutely. Even as a child I found the inane exchanges that preface violence to be absurd. Just get to it already.
“You ain’t got nothing to say to me?” The leader turned back toward the other two, as if shocked by my poor etiquette, then strucka blow to the side of my head that sent me spinning to the ground. I lay
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