he lad bit the tally, then screwed his soot-smeared face up like an old fruit. Tom frowned down at him, one eyebrow sharply raised. “Well?”
“What else, toffin?”
Tom stared at him a few seconds longer, then snorted, looking away. He looked down the street, but he didn’t look too hard; he forced himself not to linger on the glassy, dusty dark mirrors of the windows, or the mouths of tiny alleyways. He looked down the street as if he expected to see nothing, and he saw nothing.
Holbeck was a tributary of Marshwick, one of Caldwell’s many little tributaries. Not quite an alley, but not comfortably wide enough for a cab. The street was narrow and poorly-paved, flanked by leaning stacks of apartments. They disappeared up into the mist, zig-zagged with empty laundrylines; they were hung with the occasional unfortunate shoe, stirring lonely in the chill damp breeze.
Tom knew streets like this well enough. Granted, he’d lived on Walleye, down on the other side of the river – close enough to the abbatoir you got used to the reek, and everybody at the mill knew where you lived, for all it clung. That laoso potpourri was absent, and thank all the Circle for it. But all the same, he knew the sour, burnt smell in the heavy air, mingled with stagnant water and cheap tobacco.
Soon as dawn started to trickle down between the rooftops, it’d be packed with the changing of shifts, and in the evening, too. The smell of frying oil and sweet, spicy vraun would trickle down from Marshwick and Cuttle, where the stands were already setting up.
Now, in the lingering dark, Holbeck was deserted. A single weak phosphor light stood at the corner of Marshwick, peering through the smog like a flickering blue eye.
“You’re holdin’ out,” the lad said, once he’d stuck the tally in his trouser pocket.
“Listen, lad,” growled Tom, “that’s up-front. Understand?” He crossed his arms, shivering into his old patchy, oversized coat. “When you come back, if I like what I hear, there’s two shills in it for you.”
The boch seemed to consider it. He shifted from foot to foot, bit his lip with a crooked tooth, squinted his eyes. He’d a good enough Rooks face, thought Tom; he’d expected talk of shills to get more than a wo chet out of him. “Ne,” he said after a moment.
“Fuck do you mean, ne?”
“One shill up front,” said the lad. He spat on the ground. “What’re you gonna do, put a golly spell on me? I ain’t scared. Old Brint says you lot’re more bark –”
“I’ll try my luck, then,” snapped Tom, swaddling his coat tighter round him; he started to turn away, then paused when there was no protest.
Hissing between his teeth, he turned back. The lad’s hand was already outstretched. “You toft. All right.” He fumbled in the pocket of his coat with a shaky hand, then pressed a shill in the lad’s grubby palm, cursing under his breath.
“Smart kov,” chirped the boch, flashing him a grin. “Ain’t in no rush to get your neck wrung again, eh?”
Tom tugged his collar up, wincing as his fingers brushed the bruising. “Fuck you. Off with you, lad,” he added, fluttering a thin hand, “and don’t get caught, or the deal’s off.”
Soon enough, he found himself alone on Holbeck again. He took a deep breath, picking up the pieces of himself, trying to figure out which way they fit together. He dared to shut his eyes; he dared to slump, for just a moment, against the wall, running a hand through his hair, pressing both hands against his face.
His nose and cheeks were numb from the chill air. The back of his neck prickled, and little shivers went down his spine. He forced himself to breathe, in and out.
It was still new, this. Like a splash of cold water in the face. No hiding behind a ragged coat; no one mistook him for a tsat, not anymore. The Dives was a strange, dark mirror, and he no longer knew what he saw reflected there.
Sniffing, he pushed himself up off the wall, adjusted his collar against his bruised throat again. He glanced round the street once, casual-like; he saw nobody, not even the boch.
But he knew there were two shadows in the dark, and one had been following him since Caldwell. Gritting his teeth, he set off toward Cuttle in the stirring dawn, following the vague punch-drunk shape of his memory. Pressing on through his aching head; putting everything else out of it. “Floats,” he murmured, “and he drowns.”
He was a little ways down Cuttle, past the ragged pile of a sleeping beggar woman, past the suspicious glances of a couple of tyat setting up a stall, when the boch caught up with him again.
“Well?” he muttered through his teeth, not slowing his pace.
Beside him, in the corner of his eye, the urchin shrugged. “Too hungry to remember. Hey!” he yelped, catching a bony elbow.
“Keep it down,” hissed Tom.
“Boemo, boemo. There’s somebody, I’ll tell you that. But it’s hard to tell, under all them scarves,” came the boch’s voice, barely a whisper.
“It’s Vortas. Do better.”
“Little kov,” said the lad after a moment, “if it’s a kov.” Tom shot him a sharp glance, and saw him screw up his nose.
“Hells, a boch?”
“Ne chen. Didn’t get close enough to feel, but he might’ve been a golly,” said the lad, uncertainly. “Didn’t seem like a boch to me.”
Tom forced himself to swallow a lump; it didn’t ease the pounding of his heart. “Anything else?”
“He’s a Mug,” the boch replied, after a moment. “I think.”
Tom blinked. Up ahead, Cuttle split into Goodwine and Briggs; his glance flicked back and forth between them, all wreathed in smog and morning mist. He racked his brain, but he couldn’t remember. He’d’ve bet a bird he remembered Cuttle from the night before last, and Briggs was in the direction of Soliloquy, so he chose Briggs.
It was his turn, then, to feel a bony elbow in his arm. Grunting a curse, he pressed another shill into the lad’s palm. He heard a click as the lad bit it. “Benny doin’ business wi’ you,” he said after he’d tucked it away.
“Fotamos,” Tom drawled, scowling, and when the lad didn’t fall out of step with him, he pressed another tally into his hand. Then, the lad was gone.
The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end, and it wasn’t just the cold. But the gears in his head were turning, as the warm smell of curry and fried rice started drifting out into the morning air. Something clicked into place; he didn’t slow his pace, but his lip curled, and he muttered a curse into the collar of his coat. He glanced around and, as if it’d just occurred to him, turned his steps toward a tiny dark alleyway wedged between two derelict shopfronts.
It came to a dead end, with nothing but a dumpster and a tangle of moldy pipes. Halfway down, he stopped, leaning himself up against the wall.
He fumbled in his pocket and found his last pack of cheap cigarettes from last Achtus, still nestled safe and sound in his old coat. There was something achingly familiar about the motion of lighting one with Anatole’s shaky hands in the damp, dark morning.
Without looking up or down the alley, he took his first drag and coughed on it, waving away the smoke. Flooding awful. “I know you’re there, ada’na,” he said after he’d cleared his throat, raising his voice.