The Clarity of Cold Steel

“HMMM… YES.” Chirag inserts his prominent nose into his wine glass, inhales prodigiously, eyes closed, taking in its delicate bouquet. What a douchebag. “A fine vintage, but I prefer the 56’.” He waves one bottle off, points at the other. “Leave it. It has a finer, more mature tone.” As if the waiter cares. Then he fixes an eye on me, dismissing the waiter with a wave of his hand. “I had heard you were making waves out in the Boneyard, Mister Shakteel.” Below our balcony, a ripple of chatter rolls through the crowd as they bring the first dog out. “Regale me with your exploits.” It’s a small thing for the most part, not much to it but its oversized head which is mostly gleaming steel plates and teeth. “Ah, yes, here she is. Look, look. Simply glorious.” Lines of surgical scar line its flank. “Kali. She’s all mine. I performed augmentation surgeries on her myself. Raised her from a pup. Runt of her litter. I fed her with my own hands.”

And now you’re going to shove her into a meat grinder. “Impressive.” I take in the joint, the Iron Tide, a sort of neutral ground for all the shithead criminals sucking the city dry. A place where they can all go for rest and détente and not have to worry about some cross-town assassin garroting their throat. Have a nice glass of wine, some supper, watch augmented beasts rip each other rotten.

“So,” he sits back in his chair, fanning himself with a hand — he must have the vapors, I do declare — then takes up his glass, pinky out, hazarding a dainty sip, “have you come to festoon me with good news?”

“I generally don’t festoon.” I knock back a mouthful from my glass. Swallow. Grimace. I don’t want to be here, I’d rather be back with Aashirya, curled up cozy at my office, but I promised I’d show, and I’m trying to be a Samaritan. Trying to rise in the queue. Trying to survive. “A little too flowery for me, but it is alcohol.”

“Yes, yes.” He ignores me as he points back over the banister and down into the pit. He’s drunk. Excited. Sloppy. “Notice the jugular sheathing about the neck. Heh.” He casts me a sidelong smirk. “You could probably live for a year off that much steel alone.”

Good thing you riveted it onto a bloody mongrel. “Incredible.”

Behind his hand, he confides, “I removed one of her kidneys and grafted in an extra heart. From a mutt that was part Yorkshire terrier. Her circulatory system is off the charts.” He winces a bit, sucks his lower lip. “She does require the occasional dialysis treatment for compensation, of course.”

“Of course.” Why hasn’t anyone killed you yet? I cast him an eye. “You ever receive a data-board broadcast on Gortham?”

Chirag nods once, precisely. “It was what prompted me to reconnect with Parth again after all these years.”

“How so?”

“The profile niggled something in the back of my mind. It matched too closely with my own profile so I thought to settle my worries by contacting my family. Unfortunately, it proved my fears valid.” A shiv of annoyance slides under his scaly skin, twitching his grin. He turns to me, forcing a smile as he tries to discern whether or not I can barely stand him. I can. “Have you found out anything?”

“Yeah, a little.” I fill him in about Mac Heath and the crew that pulled the prestige, disappearing Gortham’s comatose corpse. The man in the iron mask. The gangland showdown onboard the Cartagena. Across the way, a garish nightmare of a man with filed teeth and a Napoleon Bonaparte-esque uniform toasts his party with bubbly.

“He is alive, then?” Chirag casts a glare Napoleon’s way.

“He was alive if we believe her.” Napoleon’s name is Johnny Shakespeare and he’s a crime boss on the north side of the city. Lately, he’s been fighting with some of the Kalighat Syndicates over territory in Litigate’s Cross. Got his finger in a number of pies. A good cat to avoid.

“And do we believe her?”

“On this?” I take another sip. “We do.”

“Well then,” he doesn’t seem impressed, “good. You find this masked man,” he says, with a flick of his hand as though it were nothing, “and you find my nephew.”

“I’m looking.”

“Look harder.”

“Good talk.” I nod. Why did I come here? “I’ll try that.”

He’s ignoring me again as they haul out the second dog. Another wave ripples through the packed crowd, Johnny Shakespeare rising and whistling boorishly with fingers in his mouth. The fervor’s followed by the inevitable banter about which dog’ll triumph. Everyone’s an expert at such fare, or thinks they are. Ask them after the bookie’s closed, though.

This second dog’s bigger. Chestier. Meaner looking. A mastiff-looking thing, part dog, part iron dinosaur. One of its forelegs is skeletal titanium. Chirag’s ire is refocused momentarily on the dinosaur. He frowns. “I’ve seen this bastard fight. One of Shakespeare’s.” He shakes his head in disapproval at Napoleon across the way who in turn raises a glass his way. Chirag reciprocates reluctantly. “Kali’ll tear him apart.”

As if on cue, Kali, all game, lunges at the big bastard, growling and slobbering up a storm, held back only by the massive chain attached to her collar. The iron dinosaur reciprocates in true war-beast fashion, trying to one-up her, nearly pulling his handler’s arms out of their sockets. I say nothing, just watch as the handlers below strain to keep the monstrosities from tearing each other apart. Prematurely.

“Would you care to place a wager?” Chirag turns back to me, eyes all aglow.

“I went cold turkey on dog fighting.”

“Oh?” His eyes are down on his dog again. “You find it distasteful?”

“No. I always lose.”

“Fah!” He’s barely listening. “I’m not talking money, Mister Shakteel. Money is the least interesting of stakes.”

“Used to feel that way, myself, when I had dough.”

Chirag leans forward over the table, cradling his chin upon flexed fingers as an announcer starts jawing up the monstrosities below. “I recently received a line on something that’s certain to pique your interest.”

“Oh?” I glance down at the beasts. “Do tell.”

“Seems a young Kshatriya gentlemen over in Sepoy had his head split open in some battle training-exercise. Or some such nonsense.” He takes a sip of wine. “Had a blade lodged right in the middle of his forehead. Shloomp!” He laughs and I hate him more than I did a second ago. “What luck!” He thumps the table.

“For who?” But my heart’s quickening like the shit I am, mouth’s drooling in anticipation. A Kshatriya liver from a young man? Pure as virgin ether? It could cure all what ails me.

“Yes, well,” Chirag pouts, “poor lad’s unable to do much more than drool, but he is young and healthy, as, I assume, is his liver.”

“What stakes are we talking?”

“Meat and potatoes, as they say — yes, that’s the spirit!” He claps his hands together as Kali tears at her handler’s leg. Another handler enters the fray. “If Kali doesn’t win, I’ll raise you in the queue.”

“The top?”

He grins, nods.

“And if she does win?”

“Then, Mister Shakteel,” his eyes narrow as he smirks, holding out his hand, “you owe me a favor.”

“And what favor might that be?”

The first handler finally manages to extricate his bloody leg from Kali’s augmented jaws.

“One to be determined at a later date.” His hand is there, limp and dangling, and I take it like a clammy lifeline and near crush it in eagerness.

Below, the dogs are released and rush upon each other with fury. It doesn’t last long.