The Clarity of Cold Steel

A PAINTING of blue-skinned Shiva glares down at me from the wall. The Destroyer.

“And so this, this Butcher was the last to see Gortham alive?” Chirag turns his head at an obscene angle until something cracks. Unfortunately, he doesn’t keel over and die. He reaches across his desk for a pen. His desk is dominated by paperwork but mostly by a massive cradle housing a stack of data-boards.

I need my pills. My side’s splitting and head’s pounding, and I can taste gutter dregs at the back of my throat. They don’t taste good.

“I expected more from you, Mister Shakteel.” He slashes a signature across a piece of paper and moves it aside. “Truly.” Does the same to another one. “You’ve a reputation for getting things done, and smartly. You’ve accomplished nothing. And you look as though you’ve spent the night in a gutter.”

“Part of an undercover sting,” I mutter lamely.

“I shall have to reconsider our previous arrangement.”

I’m at his office, the one that abuts one of the red houses he runs out of northern Malabar, which have filled the void in the organ traffic market left when the Naydari BioCorp folded abruptly nigh on two years ago. And by abruptly, I mean explosively. Six-hundred pounds of crystalized TNT’ll do that or so I’ve heard.

“She was a tough nut to crack,” I explain dourly. “And I told you what likely happened. Now. We had a deal.”

“She?” Chirag shakes his head in sorrow, disgust, dismay. “You have the temerity to demand payment after you let a woman stymie your efforts?”

“Had more to do with a kukri-wielding maniac and a loaded pepperbox aimed my way,” I counter, “but you see it how you wish.”

“At any rate,” Chirag huffs, shakes his head like the little shit he is, “I am disappointed. Thoroughly.” From atop the cradle, he selects a thin wafer of chip-wood laminate all punched through with a myriad of holes that form an occult cipher. It’s decodable only by the few that possess a med-tech-rigged difference engine. And wouldn’t you know it, Chirag’s one of the few. “Avinash Shakteel,” he reads across the top of the data-board. My data-board. My profile. He fans himself with the inherently worthless slice of glue-pressed wood that means all the world to me. “Can you, with all of your considerable investigative prowess, discern that?”

Detecting not an insignificant amount of sarcasm in his voice, I rear up on my hind legs. “You said, ’put out some feelers, get a lay of the land,’” I bite back short of snarling. I’m on shaky ground here. There’s no way in hell I can afford Chirag’s services straight up, not in ten lifetimes let alone my quickly diminishing one. Hell, there’s folk topside of the Wheel Cities can’t afford him. “You didn’t say, ’Dress it to the nines.’”

“Mister Shakteel,” he half-smirks, dabs the corner of his mouth with a black silk handkerchief, “perhaps you are correct.” I want to punch him. “Perhaps I was not clear enough in my directions.” Hard. “Perhaps this is my own fault.” In his stupid face. “Perhaps I was remiss.” But I don’t. “Perhaps I should explain to you exactly how vitally important my brother’s son, my nephew, my family, is to me.” Vitally important seems redundant to me, but I say nothing as he takes my data-board in two hands and gently flexes it, bowing the brittle material just shy of breaking. I wince.

“We had a deal.”

He holds up a hand. “My family, you see, is everything to me. You must understand this. You hail from … which borough?”

“Malabar,” I say.

“Originally,” he offers a smile in a nebulous shade of reddening condescension, “I meant.”

“Sepoy.” The only affluent Hindu borough in Mortise Locke. And by affluent, I mean some of us had running water whose lead levels weren’t so high we’d shit blood on a regular basis. Compared to Malabar and the Dirge, though? I know where this is going. Just like my life. Downhill on greased wheels and with a gale wind ripping at my six.

“Ah Sepoy,” he sits back in his chair, his fingers bending my data-board with each high-pitched syllable he utters. “SEE — POY.” He must not realize how much of an asshole he is. “As I suspected. I can practically smell the entitlement on you, beneath the sewer stink, that is.” His eyes narrow behind those thick glasses. “I suppose for someone such as yourself, born with a silver spoon severely entrenched within nearly every orifice—”

“Thanks for the nearly,” I slip in.

“—and having food and shelter and servants thrust upon you at every turn, it must be difficult to quantify exactly how important family truly is growing up here.”

“I might have some inkling.”

“Be that as it may. Ahem.” What he means is, don’t interrupt him again. “My brother Parth and I grew up vagabonds in those towers you see outside this very window.” He pulls a gaudy paisley curtain back. The Razor Towers of Calcutta Flats rise outside the window like straight blades gutting the sky. Vertical slums. My current residence. Oh, how the mighty… “We were all one another had. We slept together. Ran together. Stole together. We ate dog together.”

“Dog can be delicious,” I admit.

He ignores me, still entrenched in his moment. “We fought ghost addicts and junkies in black alleyways amidst hailstorms. We fled through sewer pipes clogged neck deep in human waste. We slept in crates. We witnessed our brothers knifed, our sisters sold off into brothels. Slavery. I’ll not bore you.” Too late. “But we two persevered. We two alone. We clung to one another through thin and through thick, through bad and through worse. And we survived. Only us. Because we were together.” He shrugs in apology. “Can you understand how strong a bond that must have forged?” He stares me full in the eyes, searching. “And we were very different people, Parth and I, and we knew that. But it didn’t matter. My big brother,” he shakes his head, “he toiled endlessly to purchase my education. Did you know that? Not the best schools, but schools, nonetheless. Scraping together what he could, day in and day out. Everything I have was built on his back. So I owe him.

“But as we grew, our paths diverged, and we became creatures of different worlds. In the end, we had a falling out.” He waves a hand. “Over a petty matter. I don’t even remember what it was. And in the interim, I rose to the level of chief engineer at the Naydari BioCorp.” He casts me a curious eye but says nothing. “There were some sour grapes, you could say, but still I love him, and as I said, I owe him. Do you have family, Mister Shakteel?”

“I did.”

My answer trips him but momentarily. “So you see? I have none myself. And where I am destitute, Parth has had some,” he considers before carrying on, “modicum … of success.”

Considering current events, modicum’s reaching, and giblet slinging ain’t generally anyone’s idea of making it, even in this world, but I button up tight cause my future’s bent close to breaking in his hands. Literally.

“Gortham is the last generation of my family. He is the sole legacy of my line. The sole proof of its existence. You understand?”

“Sure.”

“Good.” He places a small opaque bottle atop his desk. A week’s supply of my pills is inside. My lifeline. Immunosuppressives. My tenuous lifeline.

He fingers his jaw as though considering some grand scheme; then he brandishes the bottle. “Your payment, Mister Shakteel, for I am not in the habit of breaking contracts, even if you are the sort to test them.”

“Well then, I’ll be going.” I reach for the bottle.

But Chirag draws it back out of my reach. “Hmm?” he postulates eloquently and presses a button on his desk.

Shit.

His secretary saunters in through the door, all prim and proper and deliciously petite. “Mister Khanna?” She tips her eyeglasses down off of those eyes, so dark brown as to be almost black, and raises a perfectly wicked eyebrow.

Chirag sits back and twirls a finger in the air. “Miss Devar, could you be a dear and update me on Mister Shakteel’s account?”

I sit back, cross my arms.

Miss Devar flips a sheet of paper back on her clipboard and, squinting, runs a finger along a margin. “The liver account?”

“Yes, sweety. Are Mister Shakteel’s dues current?”

“Hmm…” Miss Devar flips the sheet back and looks up. “His payment is due today.”

“And yet I still find you lovely,” I muse.

Miss Devar flips her sheet back over and stands at attention. She has mine. “Ten steel marks.”

“Ten?” I nearly leap out of my seat. “Bullshit!” I pat my side, my leased liver. “It’s a clunker. You said it yourself. Some eighty-year-old alcoholic’s lost fossil.”

A Cheshire grin stretches slowly across Chirag’s lips. “That will be all, Miss Devar.”

“Mister Khanna,” she nods to her boss then turns my way, “Mister Shakteel.”

I rise, still simmering, slather a rakish bow, lock gazes with her a moment.

She smirks, curtsies, then is gone.

I watch her go. The only good part of my day thus far.

Chirag watches this little affair amidst sour disapproval.

I watch the door close behind her then turn. “You said we were square.”

“A seller’s market. And what is leasing but a drawn-out sale?”

“Bullshit.”

“Ten steel marks if you will.” He holds out one hand.

I pull the linings of my pockets clean out. “Sorry.”

“Not as sorry as you’re going to be.” His finger’s already on the button, pressing it.

Like an idiot, I turn toward the door, grinning, ready for Miss Devar to make her reentrance.

Instead of the delicious secretary, “Shit!” the two who enter from a door behind Chirag might as well be Kalighat Thuggees direct from central casting. Black turbans wind round their crowns and bundi daggers cloak each hennaed fist. My first reaction is to run, but the two Thuggees have me jacked up against the wall an instant later. The painting of Shiva falls. Clatters. An elbow’s in my neck, a blade practically in my eye. A ringing blow I barely feel robs me of my legs and next I know I’m on the floor choking as one of them throttles me. Arms flailing, I kick and spasm limply as gritted teeth and red eyes glare down at me.

Chirag’s face waxes like a shitty moon above the Thuggee’s shoulder. He watches casually as reality begins to fade from view, starting along the edges of my vision and creep-crawling toward the center of the known universe. The last thing in this world I’ll see is this pudgy fuck. Then suddenly I can breathe — or I can cough. I can cough and hack and drool lines of spittle and vomit across the floor as I’m released and roll onto my stomach. Someone kicks me in the flank, and I puke hard.

“Now, Mister Shakteel,” Chirag announces from somewhere above me, “enough with the nonsense. Uhg.” Carefully avoiding my vomit, he kneels and grabs me by the hair. Squeezes. “Did you think I was going to kill you? Tut tut. Not while my property still resides within your carcass. Not while you still owe me money. Not while the job’s left undone.”

I dry heave in eloquent response.

“Good. Good.” He yanks my head up eye to eye. “You want to finish the job, don’t you?”

Through my cacophony of gasps and rasping coughs, I manage a nod.

“Better. And you understand what will happen should you fail me?” He snaps out a piece of paper, holds it in my face so close that drool and blood smear across it. “This says I own that piece still inside you. It’s mine. That means I can take it back whenever I want. I could take it back now, Mister Shakteel, but I’m a generous man, and I have need of you still. You understand?”

“Sure…” I can breathe now, on all fours like some mongrel, panting in his office, looking broke.

“Take these.” He shoves the pill bottle in my face.

I reach for them, miss. Twice.

Chirag rolls his eyes, nods to one of the Kalighat killers. He grabs me, wrenches me back and up on my knees and Chirag opens my coat with one hand, shoves the pill bottle into my inside pocket, closes my coat. “Now, to be clear, I’d like you to take an avid interest in Gortham’s case. Dress it to the nines, as you said.” He’s standing now, looking down on me. “And I shall expect reports. Regular reports.”

I rub my throat, nod.

“And do not cease in your search until Gortham is standing here before me.”

“What if he’s dead?” I rasp up at him.

“Best keep a stiff upper lip, old chap.” Chirag brandishes my data-board and fans himself eloquently with it like some old Yankee slave cropper. I do declare. My mouth goes dry. Chirag shakes his head slowly as he slides the data-board underneath the stack.

“Damn…” I reach inside my coat, pull out the bottle, the stopper, finger one pill out. I pause. “The bottle’s half empty.”

“Oh, no no no, Mister Shakteel,” Chirag waggles a finger, smirking hard, enjoying his moment, sucking the marrow out of it and tonguing the damn hole, “it’s half full.”