T. E. Lawrence trick with a Zippo as I scrambled down into the culvert. “Heya, Deke. Things better than they were?”
“You know not to ask me that,” he said serenely, not taking his eyes from the flame. Deke always smelled slightly burnt, although I knew he was carefulwith his fires, or at least when they got out of control they didn’t hurt anyone else. I didn’t mind the smoky scent, partly because it mitigated his natural damp-woodchuck smell.
I didn’t “know not to ask him,” but you don’t argue with crazies and adepts. “Sarah asked me to drop this off for you.” I put the flyer on top of his sleeping bag, getting just enough dew on it so that he wouldn’t immediately use it for kindling. “She’s holding a meeting tonight.”
“I know,” he said. “So she’s serious about it.”
“Serious as Sarah ever gets.”
Deke grunted in reply. I hitched my bag back into place and started up the hill, thinking our conversation was over. “Hound?” he called after me.
I turned. “Yeah?”
Deke had found a pencil from somewhere and had used it to drag the flyer closer. “Will you be there?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Huh.” He gave me a long look, first one eye then the other, then closed up the Zippo and nodded. “All right.”
Well, that was encouraging. So I followed the same pattern for the rest of my day. I dropped off packets for lawyers on the waterfront and handed a flyer to Tessie, who hadn’t stepped off her boat in twenty years but whose contacts ranged all over the docks. I took copies into the North End and dropped in at the court at Tomato Gianni’s (and mooched a piece of their garlic bread while I was at it). I weighed a flyer down with a brick so that Maryam would see it when she crawled off her bed of gravel, and I gave three identically creased copies to the Triplets down in Dorchester.
And the more I did this, the more I got the sense that Sarah was right: Boston had changed. It wasn’t anything you could point to on a map or note down in a survey, but it was there, even if only a few people were positioned to notice it. If I’d been inclined toward poetry, I’d have called it a sense of absence; if I weremore practical, I’d have called it too many presences. As it was, I called it a damn nuisance.
I’d gotten through my first sixteen years in this city without noticing the big magical presence that pulled most of the undercurrent’s strings in Boston, like a cyclist paying attention only to the road right in front of her and not the tractor-trailer coming up on her left. But just as there were some doors that opened only one way, there were some things that stayed noticed once you learned to notice them. And acknowledging the Fiana meant that I couldn’t ignore the way things had changed after their fall.
There was a lot of new talent in town, for starters. It wasn’t just a matter of shadowcatchers on street corners, though I still found a few and did my damnedest to send them off somewhere they could recover. No, the recent arrivals included low-class wardwatchers and fire-eaters, people with just enough talent to stand out but not enough to defend themselves against more savvy adepts. Who had also moved into town, drawn partly by the influx of prey and partly by the new territory up for grabs. And then there were the home-grown adepts, the ones who’d had the sense to get out when the Fiana were in power and now discovered they could actually come home again.
And pretty much everyone who came into town had heard something about me. The reverse was not necessarily true.
By the end of the second shift, I was starting to get that boneless feeling that twelve hours of Boston potholes will do to you (if they don’t dislocate your goddamn shoulder first). But my last stop was in Chinatown, and so as much as I dreaded it, I stopped in at the Three Cranes.
I don’t know what I’d expected, but the huge moving truck blocking half the street was not it. Yuen’s
“You know not to ask me that,” he said serenely, not taking his eyes from the flame. Deke always smelled slightly burnt, although I knew he was carefulwith his fires, or at least when they got out of control they didn’t hurt anyone else. I didn’t mind the smoky scent, partly because it mitigated his natural damp-woodchuck smell.
I didn’t “know not to ask him,” but you don’t argue with crazies and adepts. “Sarah asked me to drop this off for you.” I put the flyer on top of his sleeping bag, getting just enough dew on it so that he wouldn’t immediately use it for kindling. “She’s holding a meeting tonight.”
“I know,” he said. “So she’s serious about it.”
“Serious as Sarah ever gets.”
Deke grunted in reply. I hitched my bag back into place and started up the hill, thinking our conversation was over. “Hound?” he called after me.
I turned. “Yeah?”
Deke had found a pencil from somewhere and had used it to drag the flyer closer. “Will you be there?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Huh.” He gave me a long look, first one eye then the other, then closed up the Zippo and nodded. “All right.”
Well, that was encouraging. So I followed the same pattern for the rest of my day. I dropped off packets for lawyers on the waterfront and handed a flyer to Tessie, who hadn’t stepped off her boat in twenty years but whose contacts ranged all over the docks. I took copies into the North End and dropped in at the court at Tomato Gianni’s (and mooched a piece of their garlic bread while I was at it). I weighed a flyer down with a brick so that Maryam would see it when she crawled off her bed of gravel, and I gave three identically creased copies to the Triplets down in Dorchester.
And the more I did this, the more I got the sense that Sarah was right: Boston had changed. It wasn’t anything you could point to on a map or note down in a survey, but it was there, even if only a few people were positioned to notice it. If I’d been inclined toward poetry, I’d have called it a sense of absence; if I weremore practical, I’d have called it too many presences. As it was, I called it a damn nuisance.
I’d gotten through my first sixteen years in this city without noticing the big magical presence that pulled most of the undercurrent’s strings in Boston, like a cyclist paying attention only to the road right in front of her and not the tractor-trailer coming up on her left. But just as there were some doors that opened only one way, there were some things that stayed noticed once you learned to notice them. And acknowledging the Fiana meant that I couldn’t ignore the way things had changed after their fall.
There was a lot of new talent in town, for starters. It wasn’t just a matter of shadowcatchers on street corners, though I still found a few and did my damnedest to send them off somewhere they could recover. No, the recent arrivals included low-class wardwatchers and fire-eaters, people with just enough talent to stand out but not enough to defend themselves against more savvy adepts. Who had also moved into town, drawn partly by the influx of prey and partly by the new territory up for grabs. And then there were the home-grown adepts, the ones who’d had the sense to get out when the Fiana were in power and now discovered they could actually come home again.
And pretty much everyone who came into town had heard something about me. The reverse was not necessarily true.
By the end of the second shift, I was starting to get that boneless feeling that twelve hours of Boston potholes will do to you (if they don’t dislocate your goddamn shoulder first). But my last stop was in Chinatown, and so as much as I dreaded it, I stopped in at the Three Cranes.
I don’t know what I’d expected, but the huge moving truck blocking half the street was not it. Yuen’s
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