The Clarity of Cold Steel

THE FOUR BLOKES standing guard outside Dok Arboghast’s shop look primed for a tussle. Long coats with collars upturned. No heavy ordnance per say, but they’re all roughnecks and they’re all sporting some form of blunt instrument a’ la torque wrenches or hammers or crowbars all moonlighting as skull-splitters.

I stride right up to them, show no fear. Nikunj is at my shoulder. That helps. We ain’t got time to dally. I’ve a feeling the knife fight’s grand finale’s coming on hard and it’s spelled with a capital lynch mob.

Eyes narrow to grim slivers soon as the four blokes recognize us. It doesn’t take long, we being nigh on the only blokes sporting tans within twenty leagues.

“Get the fuck out of here,” one of them growls, brandishing a six-pound hammer and squaring up like he’s at home plate and waiting on a fat one right down the middle.

“Go get the dok,” I say.

“Dok’s cutting on Skinner,” the hammer guy snarls, his eyes falling on my brother.

“Well, tell him to stop.”

The four grumble, taking my regard for its evil twin.

“We ain’t got much time,” I implore, my hand tightening on the handles of the ice-box I’m lugging.

“Understatement of the year,” another one says, looming like a falling oak.

Nikunj straightens, makes a small noise in the back of his throat, clearing it. He’s technically unarmed for the moment — nothing in hand — but he’s ready and strapped large and he’ll sprout more arms than a bloody spider if need be and it’s looking as though it might. He reaches over then and flips opens the lid of the ice-box.

“Thoughtful of you to use the obsidian blade,” Doktor Arboghast mutters through his grimace. His quiet eyes, and there’s no kindness in them, fall on Nikunj. He’s standing by the surgery’s door, gun drawn, mellow and loose as a napping cat. Brooklyn ain’t here, he’s back at the Zobuhle, keeping her engine running, or if he’s smart, just plain running.

Skinner’s splayed out unconscious across a steel slab in the middle of the surgical den. The wide gash across his abdomen is pried open and held with a series of clamps. Arteries and veins and vessels and all manner of squiggly shit lie clamped off within. A suction pump chugs along slowly, forcing red through smooth glass tubes. Where it ends up is anyone’s guess.

I look away.

“Cleaner cuts make easier repair work,” Nikunj says simply.

“Sweet Jesus.” Doktor Arboghast points an accusatory finger. “You did a number here.” Carefully then, like cradling a baby, he removes portions of Skinner’s entrails and places them in a gleaming metal pan. “He’ll be shitting through a bag rest of his days. If he lives, that is.”

I swallow, pale, feel myself sweat. Audibly.

“You gonna be sick, sod off,” Doktor Arboghast growls low. He stands up straight, a tall narrow chap a little older than me, bushy sideburns crawled nearly to his chin.

“Right…” I cover my mouth, look away.

Nikunj bends over and picks up the ice-box, but Doktor Arboghast hisses like a badger at it. Or him. Or both. Nikunj tilts the box forward and I open it. “We brought it for him.”

“Jesus Christ.” Doktor Arboghast swallows, eyes wide.

Inside the ice-box lies a snake den of human viscera tangled in a moist knot all poured glistening over ice.

“Jesus didn’t have much to do with it, Dok,” I say. He didn’t. It was the last of our cash pooled together. All we could afford. Entrails are cheap compared to hearts, livers, kidneys, and skin. But they still ain’t cheap.

“Who in God’s name are you two?”

“The less you know the better.”

“I believe it.” He sniffs hard, grunts, twitches his head. “Bring ’em here.”

Nikunj lugs the ice box over and sets it down next to Skinner.

The doktor takes a long gander. “Who’d you get it from?”

“A snakehead in Firedamp. Brumson—”

“No, stupid. You got a donor card on him? Her?” He gives the jelly a poke with a finger. “It?”

“Here.” Nikunj pulls out a data-card, holds it out.

“Hold it up to the light, would ya?” Doktor Arborghast’s eyes narrow as he stares at it, eyes running back and forth over the gridwork of holes. “He’ll be downing pills like the rest of them,” he wipes sweat from his brow with his forearm, “but they’ll have to do.”

I raise an eyebrow at Nikunj.

“What the hell’s all this about?” Doktor Arboghast reaches into the icebox and scoops out the Gordian Knot within. It spills over his fingers as he sets it in Skinner’s yawning abdominal cavity. “You dice him up like a Christmas ham then pull a Samaritan? Just happen to be lugging giblets?”

“That a problem?” I ask.

“Maybe,” he considers. “I know my business. My question is, do you know yours?”

“Sure.”

“So what is yours? And be swift about it cause I hear there’s a lynch mob forming to stretch your neck.” He pulls a needle and thread off a tray. “We’ve a long and colorful history of lynching folks here. Colorful meaning quite a lot of colored folk getting lynched. But only those stupid enough to visit.”

“Right…” I cover my pursed lips with my fist, take a long measured breath. “I find people, Dok. Find them when they’ve gone missing.”

“And who is it gone missing?”

“A kid from the Boneyard.”

Doktor Arboghast scratches his chin, leaves a bloody print. “And since when does anyone give a shred about some kid from the Boneyard?”

“Since now.”

“Capital.” He purses his lips as he begins working. “I suppose, like the entrails, all this work you’re doing is of an altruistic nature.”

“Not quite,” I say. “I need you to look at something. And I need some pills. Immunosuppressives.”

“And thar she blows,” Doktor Arboghast says, finding one end of the colon, holding it up like a snake charmer. With deft movements of his fingers, he sews it in place. Somewhere. Somehow. “Well, get on with it.”

Gagging, I pull Gortham’s data card out of my coat and hold it up, hand trembling. “I need you to read this.”

Doktor Arboghast considers a moment then nods. “Skinner gets the entrails, I read this, and we’re square?”

“Plus the pills.”

“Plus the pills.” He turns a hard eye on me. “Your liver’s failing you, lad. I saw it when you came in. You don’t have long even with the pills.”

“I know.”

He nods then, precisely, once. “Deal. I’d shake your hand, but…” His are engulfed in entrails. “Now hold it up. The card.”

“You don’t use a difference engine?”

“No.” Doktor Arboghast squints at the card. “Hmm, I’m something of a Luddite. Besides, those things lack artistry. Panache. Steady there now.”

“Then how—?”

“You fellas hear I’m a genius or some such blather?” he mutters.

“Sure.”

“Well, it’s mostly true.”

“What do—?” I begin, but he hushes me again.

“Adjust my glasses a smidge, would you, please?” He studies the card. “Don’t want blood on them.”

Nikunj reaches out with a steady hand and does as requested.

“Many thanks.” Doktor Arboghast’s counting holes in the card, his lips moving. “Hmmm, fifteen-years-old. Male. Hindu. Hit by the slough. Arm. Fingers…”

“How?” I raise an eyebrow.

“It’s all right there,” he explains with a nod of his head. “Just have to know how to read it. It’s all a game. Numbers. Patterns…”

“Is that all?”

“How old is it?” Then he answers his own question. “Two weeks.”

“Sure, about that.”

Doktor Arboghast grunts assent, his lips still moving as he’s conversing beneath his breath to himself, muttering something I can neither hear nor decipher. Sounds like a debate, like he’s weighing pros and cons or working out ethical dilemmas through complex algorithms privy only to him. He works through it though, the expression on his face changing as the tone of his voice runs higher. When he finishes reading, his eyes go wide. “Judas Priest…”

“What is it?” I wipe away slaver.

“The bleedin’ Holy Grail,” he murmurs.