Nothing from Droit or Aronson at Bright Street Station, but the list of reported missing children for the last six months was on my desk, just like Sergeant Connas had promised. The Line was still oozy, so instead of calling a balesteed I hit the street on foot, visiting all the places on the list and talking to parents or guardians whenever I could find them. Some of the addresses were marked in Hanks’ pocket atlas, so I checked out some of the other addresses there, too. A lot were deep in the bowels of Dockside — closed-up buildings, rickety tenements, a few bars, a few buildings that looked closed up for day but that might come alive after sundown. But nobody was keeping track of missing kids in those places.
By the time I finished, a cold rain was battering the streets; the kind of rain that’s just a few degrees away from hail. I pulled up my collar, wished I had a hat, and stepped outside to whistle up a ride home. I didn’t like the look of the Line, but I didn’t fancy a case of pneumonia, either. Not on top of my stiff back and aching head from yesterday.
I let the balesteed go as soon as I reached my flat, walked up the rickety stairs, and pushed open the broken door. The smell from the walls was sickening. Someone in the Banishat — I assumed it was the Banishat, since they were my enemies du jour — had a crude sense of humor.
They’d slashed my mattress, broken my cups and plates, thrown everything I owned on the floor and made a mess of it all. I kicked through the piles, looking for my winter clothes. I found my scarf and hat, but they weren’t wearable anymore. Not without a lot of soap and hot water, at least. I swore. Then I wondered if maybe I was jumping to conclusions about the Banishat. Droit hadn’t been with me all day, and he was the one who’d been criticizing the way I lived. I wouldn’t put it past the bastard —
A call sank its hook into my brain and I flinched, grabbing my head.
It wasn’t Carel this time. It was Shaze.
I dug my fingers into the splintered door jamb, trying to discern the Line, to send out my own call, but I couldn’t, not with my brain being shredded. The effort made me gag, so I let go of the doorframe, half-running down the stairs and into the street. Cold rain pounded against my face and ran down my neck into my collar.
Dammit, how had Shaze hooked me like that? We barely even knew each other. I wasn’t that easy to figure out, was I?
The call dragged me forward and I followed it because calls don’t hurt quite as much if you do what they want — find the sender. I kept an eye open for a constable, but there’s never a member of the Watch around when you need one. Three blocks down I grit my teeth and staggered off-call into a tavern, biting back nausea.
The bartender looked up, bored. I lurched to the bar, pulled off my brass badge, and slapped it down on the counter.
“Message to Bright Street,” I grated. He frowned at the badge. “Backup. Sergeant Connas. Tegeus Droit. Got it?”
“Tegeus Droit? That guy who worked for Yzyrchye?”
I swept up my badge and hurried out. I couldn’t fight the pain any longer.
The call dragged me deeper into Dockside, through streets I usually patrolled on a balesteed for safety. Then, suddenly, it snapped, recoiling with a nasty mental jerk that made my eyes water and my gorge rise.
I leaned against a wall, shuddering and soaking wet. Then I forced myself upright and began to run.
I’d never felt a forced break before, but I’d read about them. They happen when sentinels unwillingly release a call. I braced myself and discerned as I ran.
The Line was ugly, oozing bale like pus. Something had worn it thin here, just like it had been worn thin outside the cemetery over Wry Dick’s body. Already sick from the call, I dry-heaved and then sent out my own call, searching for Shaze. I wouldn’t have been able to do it earlier, but after being psychically linked to him, I knew who to look for, and it was easy.
Still alive, then. I followed the call into another one of Dockside’s decaying tenements, this one leaking water every half-foot. I called an orb of balelight to illuminate the dark, fetid hallways as I hurried up the stairs.
The blood spattered over the walls was a giveaway that I was in the right place. I found Shaze lying in a room that was a little larger than a closet, sprawled halfway over a nasty-looking cot. The call dropped as soon as I looked at him.
I leaned over his body. Something had torn into him, something a lot cruder than our mysterious Far, the hopscotch knifesman. I’d seen marks like that before — the gashes and bites of skinslicers and gnawers, knifebacks and needleclaws.
Shaze gasped as I touched his throat. His pulse was weak and unsteady. I was surprised he was alive at all.
“Got her,” he breathed. “Storm. Cry … help.”
“Her? Who? Who got her?” My mind raced. “Milka? Were you with Milka?”
“Banishat.” He hissed the word like a dying breath, then sucked in another, fighting for life. I pulled open his torn sweater, his shirt, and winced. My bright white balelight lit the wounds in unforgiving relief. Something had done a good job of burrowing into his unprotected stomach and trying to gnaw on everything it found there. “Didn’t know. I wouldn’t….”
“Dammit, where’d the Banishat take her?”
He sucked in another breath. Something in his ripped chest bubbled. He wasn’t going to make it. “They….” he coughed and blood spilled over his lips. I didn’t have much time. “Cellar.”
“Where?” I gripped his hand. “Help me save Milka.”
“Yard.” The word was barely audible, slurred with gore. I wondered if there was anything I could do to keep him alive long enough to get him to Blackstone Hospital, but his lungs had stopped moving.
“Kyrchye.” I placed his hand on his chest. “Sorry, pal.”
I lit a cigar, getting Shaze’s blood all over my coat and smoke, and stared at the door. Nobody else in the tenement made a sound. Hiding, most likely. The transient attack couldn’t have been quiet. I wished I hadn’t fought his call so hard. If I’d arrived a little sooner, maybe he’d still be alive.
At last I took a deep breath and stood. My stomach was uneasy for all sorts of reasons, and dark shapes pressed against the Line’s paper-thin barrier around the room. I walked outside and sent the street kids brave enough to approach me off with messages to Axton and Sergeant Connas and Noble Aronson. Then I took a deep breath and sent out a call to the one person in the investigation I knew I could whistle up.
Axton arrived first and was already crouching over Shaze’s body when Droit showed up, half an hour later, with Aronson in tow. I barely had time to glance at him to make the call drop before he slammed me against the wall, his forearm against my neck and his knee grinding into my bladder.
“I thought I said no more of that,” he snarled, his face less than an inch from mine.
“I needed you.”
“Tegeus, leave her alone,” Aronson snapped, his eyes sweeping over the blood and fastening on the corpse. “She found Ezery Shaze.”
“So?” Droit growled. “He’s dead.”
“They have Milka,” I choked. “I think he died trying to protect her from them.”
Droit released me, although his expression didn’t change.
“Call me again and I’ll carve out your lungs.”
“Sod off, then.” I ran a hand through my short hair, relieved to be in one piece. I had to stop forgetting that Droit was a lunatic. “You’re the one who wants action. Shaze said the Banishat were taking her to a cellar, maybe someplace called the yard, or in a yard?”
“Wait, wait.” Aronson looked up from shaking rain off his hat. “Banishat?”
I squinted at him, but his surprise seemed genuine enough.
“The people who ambushed me had Banishat rings. And Shaze mentioned ’em, too, when I found him.”
“The Banishat….” the Nobilis shook his head, looking unconvinced. “That’s ancient history.”
“How much did Shaze tell you about the Banishat, Captain?” Axton asked, quietly. “Can you remember what he said?”
“He didn’t say much, just that they’d taken her to a cellar, or a yard, or both.” I wracked my brain, trying to remember. “He asked for help and said something about a storm and crying, but he might have been delirious.”
“Interesting,” Axton murmured.
“Very dramatic.” Droit moved next to the small anatomist to look at the body. “Transients got him.”
“Yes.” Axton straightened and turned. Fresh streaks of crimson marked his soiled coat. He pulled on his gloves, keeping his eyes lowered. “Do you remember the address Jack Rake gave us, General?”
Droit’s eyes narrowed. “Yardline. Where’s Yardline?”
“It’s a neighborhood in Dockside, General.” Axton buttoned up his gory coat, glancing at me. “Do you know it?”
“Name doesn’t mean anything.” I pulled out Hanks’ pocket atlas and Axton quickly found it, leaving bloody smudges on the pages.
“Here, Captain.” He sounded apologetic. “I’ve … I’ve done some business there.”
“Huh.” I briefly tried him on a suspect, but the little man seemed too meek and cautious to be a slaver. I decided I’d keep an eye on him, anyway. We headed out, leaving Shaze to grow cold in his dilapidated tenement room.
The sleet was coming down so hard it hurt, and even though it was the middle of the day, it was dusk-dark. Ice skittered along the cobblestones and built up between the cracks. Autumn storms in Cislunar; we’d be seeing snow in another month. Nobody else was stupid enough to be out on the streets. Even Dockside’s homeless were trying to hide, huddling in doorways and under makeshift encampments in the alleys. I kept my balelight high, even though the Line was so badly Frayed there was bleed-through. Something moved, off in the shadows. Droit whipped around.
“Did you see that?”
“It wasn’t a rat,” Aronson said, sounding uneasy. “It had too many limbs.”
“How close to a Break are we?” Droit slid his borrowed sword from his scabbard.
“The Line’s bleeding — we call it a pall.” Aronson pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face. I guessed from his unfocused gaze that he was discerning. “It seems to have gotten worse from yesterday. Much worse, if you’re seeing things.”
“Shouldn’t the Vigilance be doing something?” Droit asked.
“There’s not much we can do.” Aronson and I looked at each other in agreement. “Sentinels use bale. Using bale creates gaps. Gaps fray the Line.”
Droit eyed me.
“Is that balelight damaging the Line?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Then get rid of it.”
I wanted to take offense at his tone, but he was right. I let the balelight go. We should have been left in darkness, but the air around us gave off a faint, sickly grey glow.
“Stage Three, maybe Stage Four,” Aronson murmured. “What’s doing this?”
We walked faster, our boots kicking aside pellets of ice. Axton moved through the dark narrow streets with quiet assurance, his shoulders hunched and his grey eyes flickering back and forth as he walked. We were in the worst part of Dockside’s Chifes now. I wondered how he knew it so well; wondered whether I should have left those corpses with him. There was something wrong about him; something I didn’t trust, even now. Of course, I was the one who wanted Droit as a bodyguard, so my judgment might not be all that trustworthy.
“Here,” Axton said at last, stopping. “The next several blocks are all Yardline.”
We’d stopped in a narrow dirt lane next to the kind of bar Arlin the Knave might have hesitated to enter even if it’d had a “free gin” sign out front. Its windows were shuttered and its door shut. Everything around us was pallored with viscous bale that shed its unwholesome light over the dingy street corner. I cautiously discerned, knowing Aronson was doing the same.
“We’ve gotta be close,” I muttered. My head was starting to throb again from the clubbing it had taken yesterday.
“I think …” Aronson hesitated, then pointed downward, at an angle. “It’s brighter lower.”
“Cellar,” I said at once. “Shaze said ‘cellar.’”
Droit circled the building, looking around.
“Do you think this is supposed to be a door?” he asked, out of sight. Wood cracked, making all of us jump. I walked around back in time to see Droit tear a rickety door off its hinges.
“You don’t believe in sneaking up on your enemy, do you?” I asked.
“It’s hard to sneak when you have an army behind you.” With a grunt, he tore off another chunk of the door. “Besides, it’s more fun this way.”
Balelight glowed through the doorway, washing through the water-stained, sagging hallway. Someone other than Droit had broken holes in the walls, and large rats scuttled out of our way. Their eyes glinted in the bale.
“What do you see?” Droit asked, glancing back at me. I knew what he meant.
“He’s right; it is brighter,” I said, turning away. It occurred to me that if I was feeling this queasy looking at the bale, Aronson must be getting it a lot worse. Well, too bad for him. I called him and Axton around back with us.
Droit kicked the last planks out of the way and stepped through, looking from side to side. We followed. I was unarmed, but I noticed Axton holding a slender scalpel close to his palm, its edge flush with his index finger. He looked frightened, and I couldn’t imagine he’d be much good in a fight, but he seemed game. I walked next to him, discerning and hating it but too afraid to stop. If a transient was about to push through, I wanted to know.
Aronson took up the rear, his fingers running along the wall and his face drawn. His higher sensitivity to the Line wasn’t doing him any favors today. Sometimes being a low-ranked beck has its advantages.
Part of the ceiling had fallen in. Water ran down the stained plaster and puddled on the floor, glowing an unhealthy silver-grey. Droit wound through the fallen beams, tense, one hand raised to keep us back. Then he gestured us forward and kept going. Rats crouched on top of the beams, watching us without fear. I stopped as a spot of color caught my eye. A chalk hatchmark. One.
I held my breath and kept walking. A few feet down the corridor, hastily drawn on a wall. The second mark. Two.
I tapped Aronson’s shoulder and pointed. His eyes widened. We both looked for the next as Droit paused and examined the floor. There it was — a third mark, barely visible. Three.
I blinked. The bale seepage was stronger. The air hung heavy and greasy, like you’d find in a fry cook’s kitchen.
Droit made up his mind and turned a corner. A narrow, rickety-looking stairway led downward. He dropped to one knee, then crouched lower, until his cheek was on the floor. He took a long look before standing.
On the top stair, a hasty little squiggle. A hurriedly marked four? I reached out and touched a finger to the symbol. My fingertip came away covered in chalk dust. Fresh then. I grinned fiercely at it. Good for you, Milka.
Droit proceeded cautiously, putting his weight down with care. It wasn’t any good; the stairs creaked under our steps as we came after him. He shook his head with disgust and walked faster, abandoning caution.
Halfway down, another squiggle. Five. Around the corner at the bottom of the stairs, a trailing mark. Six. I imagined her struggling, tripping, making her desperate little hatchmarks on the walls and steps in the hope that Shaze would find her.
A pungent smell filled the air: urine, shit. And something less natural: bale. It smelled like a papercut, an unexpected sting. The walls fluoresced with it.
The stairs stopped at a wooden door — the cellar, I assumed. The glow from it was bad; the glow around it, seeping through the gaps where the edges of the door didn’t quite touch the jamb, was worse. I swallowed hard to keep from retching. Behind me, Aronson was panting like a hurt animal.
Droit crouched and listened. He shrugged and stepped back, holding up a fist. One finger. Two. Three. Four. He leaned to one side. Five.
The heel of his boot slammed into the door, by the lock. Wood splintered. The door shuddered, opened a few inches, then abruptly stopped as a chain caught it.
He kicked again. The chain ripped out of the old wood and the door slammed back against the wall.