The Clarity of Cold Steel

COME MORNING, BROOKLYN’S HOVERING outside an impromptu congregation of the Port City beggar’s union, held at a chokepoint on a quayside on the shore of Firedamp, overlooking Boneyard Bay. Like some forlorn mutt, he sniffs out a couple of roosts. He finally hunkers, crouched off the beaten path, knees up by his ears, atop an overturned joy boat nestled in amongst the various stalls set up for the farmer’s bazaar. He doesn’t dare set his ass on the actual dock, though, not with the grand poohbahs of panhandling all hairy eyeballing him as they’re sifting for chits in the immediate vicinity.

“Fresh carrots!” a hawker blares as I sidle up next to Brooklyn.

Waves crash at our backs.

“Fresh carrots, my ass,” Brooklyn scoffs, biting one in his fist. He spits it out behind him into the water. He double-takes, almost falling off his perch when he notices me. “You’re like a ghost, my man.”

“Feel like I’m nearly always on the verge,” I answer.

“Shitty spot for a meet and greet.”

“I’ve seen worse.” The foot traffic’s forced to slow here because of the funneling in of the docks and the masses of hawker stands. Folks walking by are forced to inch along at a snail’s pace or risk a dip in the drink.

“Carrot?” Brooklyn offers. “Tastes like shit.”

“Got to work on your sales pitch.” I snatch it, though, take a bite. Chew. We watch the foot traffic inching along at a glutinous pace, folks shoulder to shoulder, checking the wares, each other, getting hassled by the beggars and hawkers alike. Everybody bargaining hard like each steel coin is their last which it sure as hell might be. Port Authority might show up at some point, but if I keep an eye on the beggars, I’ll know it before it happens. Coal mines and canaries.

“What’s the word on the Cartagena?” The carrot does taste like shit, but since I haven’t had a non-liquid meal in near a week, I persevere.

“Same show, different day, my man. Joint’s jumping twenty-four seven. If people aren’t pickling their livers they’re donating portions for steel.” He nods his head like to the beat of some invisible drum. “Word is the Butcher’s knifeman went down.” He watches some muslin-wrapped dame flit through the crowd like a mountain goat traversing a cliff. “Word is he challenged Nikunj Shakteel.” He runs his thumb across his throat.

“Naw.” I watch a hawker molest some poor sailor just trying to get on with his day. “Took a sabbatical.”

Brooklyn rears back. “How do you know?”

“Nikunj’s my brother.” The sailor suddenly realizes he does indeed desire Morlock-grown mushrooms, starts forking over lost wages.

“Your brother?” Brooklyn gawks, eyes wide, like I’ve got three heads. “Man’s a legend. Wait—” He shakes his head. “You were there? You saw it?”

“Hell, I set it up.”

He whistles low. “You as good as him?”

“Better.” At running away … hiding … being a shit in general. “The Cartagena now, focus.”

“Tighter than a drum.” Brooklyn dabs some ghost into his pipe, tamps it down with his thumb. “Seems Mainlo handled bouncing operations, but he also kept the coppers at bay. Man was respected. Now the Cartagena reeks like a pig farm.” He spits over the side, into the brine. “Lousy with the swine.”

I nod. The laws of unintended consequences. Why is it they’re always worse?

Brooklyn lights his pipe, takes a pull.

“How much they offering on my head?” I ask.

He raises an eyebrow. “Heard about that, huh?”

“No.”

“Fifty.” He smokes, eyes twitching to snake slits. “What d’you want me to do?”

“See any angles for breaking in?”

“Man, there’s always a way in.”

“A way without getting shot or stabbed?”

“My man wants everything.” He shakes his head. “That all?”

“No,” I say. “You know the Nostromo?”

He shakes his head. “Naw.”

“It’s a derelict freighter on the fringes of the Boneyard, on the very edge of the open ocean.”

He nods.

“Tell Parth and the little woman I want to meet there in two hours. Out of sight.”

“Okay.”

“Then get back to the Cartagena. See if you can suss out an angle for getting on board without developing lead poisoning.”

“Sure enough.”

I’ve got to move soon on this whole wretched affair. Chirag’s up my ass and down my throat and Gortham’s trail’s getting colder by the minute. Whatever happened to him happened on that ship. The odds of him still being there are few and far between, but I gotta get in there. Gotta see. Gotta know. I slide a half-sleeve of steel Brooklyn’s way. “A small advance.”

“Shit,” he sighs, takes the coin sleeve in hand, and I can tell he’s feeling the ridges with his fingernail, counting them out one by one as he watches his amadlozi ghosts rising. “You ain’t joking. Small.”

“It ain’t digging ditches, kid.”

“Digging ditches pays more, my man.”

“Probably.” I bob my head. “And what a delight it is.”

“Bullshit.” Loops of smoke coil slithering from his parted lips. “You never dug no ditches.”

He’s right, I’ve never dug any ditches. Graves maybe, but only my own, and I’ve got it on layaway, paying it off a piece at a time, shovelful by shovelful.

The beggars have suddenly become scarce, abandoning their semi-lucrative posts and melting into the crowd. Brooklyn’s still calling me on my bullshit-ditch theory, becoming ever more eloquent by the second when I chop him silent.

“Huh?”

“Best make with the scarce, kid.” I nod toward Draegar and a couple flatfoots muscling their way through the press like a phalanx of bulls through Pamplona. Draegar’s eyes are every which way, searching out between stalls then jumping to faces, grabbing passers-by and yanking back hoods and hats. By the time Draegar’s eyes light upon my perch, I’ve long since pulled another ghost job.