The Clarity of Cold Steel

CLIPPER’S DEAD the next day in an explosion that wipes out half a block in Firedamp. Story in the papers is the explosion was from a pocket of gas released from the coal mines underneath the borough. But those mines played out decades ago, and I’m feeling twitchy about it. Some people don’t get a happy ending. Clipper? His beginning and middle sucked, too. Brumson’s cut shop was the epicenter of the explosion. Eighty-three died. The explosion leveled four buildings. Gentrification specialists are already bidding on the smoking ruin.

I start walking faster.

Nikunj is north in Red Chapel following a lead, and I’m headed south with Brooklyn for a meet and greet with a snakehead out of Yankton following word of another liver up for sale. I’m crossing the Dead River Bridge when I flip the Daily Telegram over and happen to catch the shipping news.

“Shit.” I stop dead.

Coincidence: a sucker’s bet. Seems a rash of arson hit the Boneyard last night. A lot of ships hit, a lot sunk. No leads on the perpetrator or even cause. At least the paper didn’t claim it was firedamp fumes seeping from underwater coal mines.

The Cartagena and the Iphigenia were hit, both destroyed.

I can see the Iphigenia’s wooden figurehead sitting cold and still in the briny depths, can see that unknowable expression on her face and I wonder: if she could pull that dagger out of her heart, would she just slit her own throat with it?

A derelict schooner the kaMalandela was among those hit, too, razed smoking down to its core. It’s possible that “the owner was careless with matches” as the article suggests, but I know the ship is the Zulu Chieftain’s, and he doesn’t seem the type that smokes in bed. The number dead in either incident is not in print. Boneyarders’ demises ain’t generally considered worthy of ink.

Brooklyn just looks up at me, eyebrow raised. “What’s up?”

“They know who we are.”

“The cops?”

“No.” I fold the paper in half and slap it into Brooklyn’s chest. He takes it, glances down. Eyes go wide. Passersby jostle past us, grumbling on their way to drek and toil and corporate despair.

Brooklyn closes his mouth.

“They’re coming for us hard.” Beneath the bridge, the grey water oozes past, doldrum slow. “The man in the iron mask.” I take a gander down either end of the bridge. My chest begins to groan like the hull of a submarine succumbing to the depths, trembling, crushing inward under a pressure near inconceivable. I can barely breathe. They’re hitting us at home. I start walking fast, start walking hard.

Brooklyn’s pawing at my shoulder.

“Get yourself lost, kid.”

“Man, I told you, the Chief—”

“Chief might be dead, kid.” I stop, rip his hand off my greatcoat lapel, grab him, pull him in. “Listen, get good and lost. So good no one can find you. Check the drop point five days from now if you think it’s all jake.” It won’t be.

“And if it ain’t?”

“Been nice knowing you.” Then I’m off and running in the other direction, west, over the bridge and onto Long Isle. Blood’s pounding in my ears as I knife through the clotted herd. I’ve two more bridges, one more isle, and two more boroughs to hoof it through before I’m in Sepoy. Before I’m home.

I make record time.

The sirens are blaring in the distance, from atop the hill, and I can smell the smoke as I hurtle up the way, old Victor-Hin mansions rising cryptic to either side of me. I’m praying to all the Gods I should and never do, praying that Aashirya and the kids are okay, that the man in the iron mask missed them, but my old home atop the hill is a blasted charnel ruin when I get there, flames ripping like dragon’s breath out of the windows, all the windows, ground to third floor, spewing raw hatred at the sky.

As the firemen hack and stumble, blasting solid streams of water and wet-chem into my erstwhile home, they stand around the blazing ruin like zombies, staring wide-eyed, hands covering mouths hanging slack-jawed and appalled. They. I recognize each and every one of them, and without exception, they recognize me. My old neighbors. Not a single one will even so much as glance in my direction. I may as well be a ghost, the shadow of a ghost, the whisper of the shadow of a ghost. Dalit. Untouchable. Less than nothing. The bastards. The fuckers. I curse them all to hell, but I once was one of them and would give anything to be again.

A voice screams inside my head that I should leave, that I should run, that the men who did this are probably still here, still watching from somewhere, and that this is a trap and I strolled like a bloody fool right into the teeth of it.

But I don’t bloody care.

I need to find my family.

The crowd melts as I approach it, concaving inward as I try to force eye contact, but they persevere. I grab one, Daruka; his son and my son Keyan are best friends. Or were. I don’t even know anymore. Daruka stares off numbly past me as I scream in his face, asking about my family, the fire, anything. He might as well be made of wood. Mumbles something about a masked man. I cast him aside.

The world tastes of ash. People are yelling, children crying, everyone rearing back in panic as a gable gives way sending a shower of embers riding high. The fire captain’s hollering garbled mash through a speaking trumpet.

A fireman trudges past, dragging a hoseline caveman-wise over his shoulder. I grab him. “Was there anyone inside?”

He tilts his helmet up, trying to catch my lingo over the din. “Don’t know,” he yells. “Couldn’t get in.” He cups his hands to his mouth. “Explosion.” Then he looks up.

A pair of uniformed coppers are shoving through the crowd, bulls muscling through china shops, muscling toward me.

“Fuck—” I turn and Detective Vortex and Constable Ruben are suddenly there, too, coming at me from the other side in a pincer movement, eyeballing the crowd, grabbing folk by the lapels, hollering questions.

They don’t see me yet.

The ground is a soaking wet snake orgy of cold hose crisscrossing the ground, and I’m high-stepping through it all, hands in my pockets, head down until I duck around a house, through a yard. Then I’m clambering over a picket fence, landing, losing my lunch. I wipe my mouth. Behind, someone’s hacking open the blazing roof of my erstwhile home with an axe as hose streams pound it from all angles.

I hustle on. My home is gone, and I know that if Aashirya and any of the children were in it when it blew, so are they.