The Clarity of Cold Steel

MY HEAD’S STILL SPINNING when I finally manage to stutter-fumble my way back to my pad, a ferron-crete coffin on Dhule Street, thirtieth floor of Razor Tower West. In Calcutta Flats. I can barely force open the door for all the mail shoved through the slot. As always. The envelopes, all late notices and bills and death threats, have congealed into a morass on the floor, forming a near-impenetrable wedge beneath it. Trials and tribulations. Wincing, I drop my shoulder into it despite, and do what I must. I am a man of action, and so I can do naught but tirelessly prevail.

It’s so cold inside I can see my breath. I spark up a cig, unbuckle my small sword, pour myself a few fingers of cheap Wescott brandy, and sit by my empty hearth, imbibing in tepid sips. It’s shit brandy but does the trick. I set my pill bottle on the end table, close my eyes, throw my feet up. The wind’s moaning as it blows across the top of the chimney forty floors above, drawing air up from my fine quarters, stirring ash, memories. Who sold me out? How’d Draegar know I’d be at Sweet Sally’s?

“There’s a hit out on you,” a voice comments from the darkness.

“Holy Dark Mother—” I jump at the voice, spinning in place, hand buried inside my coat, scrabbling, fumbling at the handle of my Webley-Colt. Then I recognize the voice, stop, let it go, ooze back into the chair. “Bloody hell…”

“From some Boneyard syndicate.” He’s sitting in the high-backed chair set in the corner of the room. By the window. It offers a fine view of Malabar’s jagged hellscape. The other Razor Towers rise high into the night sky, lit up along their lengths periodically by the homey glow of windows. The ocean lies far off beyond, invisible except for the northern reaches of Boneyard Bay’s lights swaying from atop masts and spars.

“How much?”

“Enough.”

“Well, add that to the tally.” I slug back my brandy, grimace. “You want some?” Draegar may have broken one of my ribs.

“Thought I’d warn you.” Nikunj, my brother, waves a hand, rises from his seat and gazes out the window. “How’ve you been getting on?” Even in this, he moves with a fluidity and grace lacking in most bipedal instruments, a panther on the prowl.

I look around. Laugh.

He offers a sad smile. “You fixed for pills?” He takes my pill bottle in hand, gives it a depressing shake. A baby’s rattle might mock it.

“Fuck off.”

“You dosed level?”

“You my brother or my mother?” I snatch the bottle from his hand. Fume. Harrumph. Sit back down. Glower. “How’d you get past all the mail?”

“Trade secrets.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small parcel. “Here.” He sets it on the table. More pills. If I were the bigger man, I’d protest, but I ain’t the bigger man. In fact, I’m fair sure I’m the opposite. “Any word from the organ broker?”

“Why? You looking to make some coin?”

“Movement in the queue?”

“A lot,” I answer truthfully, filling my glass again, at a loss for words, words that hold any meaning, anyways. I knock back another mouthful. It burns going down. Burns good. Burns clean. Even though my liver’s incinerating with every sip.

Nikunj frowns in disapproval but says nothing, turns, and from beneath his greatcoat draws a kukri. It looks familiar. The Gremlin’s. “Your friend paid me a visit.”

“Wasn’t a friend.”

“He told me you gave him your address.”

“It’s your address now.”

Nikunj lets that one slide, too. My brother, cool-headed and smooth, fifty paces past a fault in everything he does. Doesn’t mean I don’t try to raise his ire from time to time.

“Did you kill him?” I ask.

“No.” Nikunj glances down at his hands, studies them, those dual instruments of precision-tooled murder. “He’ll find it difficult to walk for some time, no doubt. Or tie his shoes. Or anything.” If only he enjoyed it. Nikunj used to be the knife fighter in all of Mortise Locke, a city once known far and wide for stabs in the back, in the front, and every which way. “In the future, I’d appreciate it if you’d not send any more challengers to the house. The kids and all. Plus, I’m retired.”

“Aces.” I offer a thumbs up.

“What happened?” Nikunj raises an eyebrow.

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Your ribs.” His eyes narrow. “Your shoulder, too.”

“Someone tuned me up.”

“Why?”

Another sip. “Didn’t like the song I was singing.”

“Was it the tone or the words?”

I consider a moment. “Both.”

Nikunj stares out over the slums of Malabar. “Anything I can help with?”

“You offering singing lessons?”

“I’m offering whatever it is I can.”

I shake my head, think on it a moment. Taking help from your little brother’s something that feels intrinsically wrong. Some vestigial chord striking a nerve that atrophied a long time ago. From when he was in diapers and you were running circles ragged round him. It ain’t true anymore, you know it, but it still feels somehow wrong.

“Fine.” He makes for the door. “I stacked the letters from Aashirya on the table.” He takes deep breath, staring at the stack. “With the others. Good night, brother.”

“Wait.” I hold up a hand.

“Tell me.”

I nod. Tell him what’s what about Gortham, which isn’t much. The sad saga. From Chirag on down to Parth and Catia. I tell him how my odyssey to brace the Butcher crashed and burned like a lead zeppelin. About how I scoured the channels for a dead kid that wasn’t there. How I checked the morgue and came up snake eyes. And then I spill the rest, about my sad-sack drama and how my chances of a transplant plummeted from merely improbable to a bullet behind the ear. Nikunj just listens the whole while, nodding here and there, never trying to butt in. I can practically hear his gears turning.

“Think Mac Heath iced him?” he asks after all that.

“She’s crooked.”

“Crooked enough to kill a kid?”

“Like it’s some big thing.”

He looks up through one eye. “What’s the angle?”

“Don’t know yet. Maybe she husked him?”

“Big risk on her part if she did it. Folks get wind of it, they’ll come banging on her door with pitchforks and torches.” He squints as he does some mental math. “Maybe she’s got the juice to hold them off, survive. But it’s bad for business.”

“Not all bad.” I shake my head. “Organ trade’s booming harder than ever. A one-time boost?”

“She’d need to relocate,” he concedes. “Reestablish herself. Work new contacts. New syndicate. New muscle. No mean feat.”

I wince, nod. “Still better than dying.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’ll ask around.” Nikunj nods and moves to go. “See about the hit, too.”

“I know who it is.” I shake my head, take a slug. Something’s eating at him, I can feel it, a pregnant elephant pause in the room. “That the only reason you came?”

He seems taken aback a moment, freezing at the door. “Aashirya said you…” Words fail him and he falters, a rarity with him. I relish it, minute example of a man that I am.

“Forget it.” I wave a hand. “You should probably get back. Don’t want your wife worrying or your silverware tarnishing or any other such doleful miseries occurring in your storied absence.”

“I wanted to…” He trails off, clears his throat, straightens, suddenly wooden. “The children are doing exceptionally well. Bhaarati and Keyan excel in their studies and Kalavati I call the Little Queen. She reigns over the boys as such.”

“They’re your problem now.” I slug a sloppy mouthful from the bottle.

“They miss their father.”

“Go home then.” I point toward the door.

“You think this is the way I wanted it?” Nikunj shakes his head, his hands out, open. “You think this is the way Aashirya wants it?”

“I don’t blame you,” I snarl. “I don’t blame her.”

“Truly? Because you spit only acid, brother.”

I knock back the rest of the brandy, nearly choke. “It’s all I have now.”

“Ask her.” He stalks across the room at me. “Go back and ask her and she’ll come to you. She’ll come to you with the children and your family will be whole again.” His two hands come together, fingers intertwining into one great fist. “I’ll liquidate the house. The furniture. Everything. It’s all yours. I never wanted it. Never wanted this.”

“Look around you.” I launch out of my chair, whip my glass, exploding against the wall. My coffin’s about ten by twenty of spalled concrete. It’s a shithole. “You said my family could be ’whole’ again? Here? In the dregs of bloody Malabar?” I stomp and clomp. “Sure, as a bunch of untouchables. Living a life of shit and rats and worm-eaten bread.” I grab the bottle. “Is that ’whole?’ Is that what you think I want for them?”

“Perhaps it is not only what you want that matters?” Nikunj crosses his arms. “Perhaps you should consider what it is that they want. And what they need. Perhaps the sum total of a fractured family on high is less than a—”

“Whole family subsisting on a pittance?” I finish for him. “Sure. I can see it now. My two sons can be sludge-muckers and my daughter a whore for sludge-muckers. Oh, wait.” I gaze off into the distance. “And can you see Aashirya here?” I point out, highlighting the finer points of my castle. “Ha!” I laugh, but it ain’t funny. “I’d die before I let that happen.”

“Then leave Malabar.” Nikunj points out the window. “Strike out. Go to another borough. Go to Salem’s Wharf. Go to Halifax. Go to Yankton.”

“Because the Americans have such a good history with us darkies.” I upend my bottle. It’s empty now. “Story of my life.”

“There’re places they wouldn’t be outcasts.”

“Sure there are, and maybe they wouldn’t be outcasts, but they’d be fifth-class citizens. Everywhere except Sepoy.” I sit back down, hang my head, clutching the empty bottle in my hands. “Damn.”

A few years past, I got cut on a job. Cut bad. Bad enough that I should’ve been dead. Then the slough hit me. Hard. Practically husked me clean. “I won’t have that for them.” But I still didn’t die. Cause I had money. Money and Nikunj. As per usual, he saved my worthless hide, got me to a grafter not unlike the Butcher. “I won’t rob them of their lives. Of their futures. Of their children’s futures.” A procession of doks were able to keep me alive long enough to transplant a few organs from a few donors. The coup d’resistance or d’eta was the liver work. Performed by Chirag. The donor happened to be an untouchable. Nikunj didn’t know till after. So the question is: what happens to a Kshatriya favored son from the high and mighty borough of Sepoy who suddenly has an untouchable part grafted into his body? A mighty fall, indeed, and you’re looking at it.

“Go home, Nikunj.” I clamber from my chair and raid my cabinet for another bottle of cheap something or other. “Lock the door on the way out.”