The night fog was rolling in and the moonlit street glistened like a bawd’s lips, moist and treacherous. It was the time of the evening when honest folks were heading home and dishonest ones were getting ready to start work.
I stood in the doorway of the city watch’s Bitch Street headquarters, lighting a cigarette before my own shift started.
“Lorencz. Have you read the reports yet?”
“No.” I took a drag, turned, and leaned against the doorpost. “I just got in.”
Night Captain Stefan Medley held out a sheaf of papers. His hair was short, in a regulation cut, slicked back and dark against his too-pale skin. His eyes were a little too big for his face and he had a slight, girlish build. He was the kind of guy Kyrchye made to be picked on by big men and doted over by big women.
I stuck the fag between my lips for safekeeping and thumbed through the reports, ragpaper rustling against my fingers.
Line by line, same old thing — fights, vandalism, theft, rape, murder. A lot of complaints, a handful of arrests.
I tossed the sheaf on a desk behind me and retrieved my smoke in time to redirect the ash to the street instead of my shirt.
“Not so bad.”
“Still early,” he said, seriously.
“Anything worth my attention?”
“Not really.”
Medley was jake. I didn’t know much about him, but he hadn’t turned a hair the first time I’d walked into headquarters, two nights ago, and he hadn’t tried to put me to work just for the hell of it. I liked him better than I liked the second night captain, Marcus DeWitt. DeWitt started shouting every time he saw me sitting around waiting for something worthwhile to do.
Even after two nights, I could tell me and DeWitt were gonna have a great time working together.
Working for the Watch wasn’t my idea. It was punishment duty. Every mage who works for the Cislunar Watch is there on punishment duty. There ain’t a spellscraper in his or her right mind who’d voluntarily slog around town doing the city’s dirty work. But I’d been called up on the Order’s carpet once too often, so when the Watch had an opening, I was the one Guildmistress Carel had sent down to fill it. Night shift sorcerer on the Dockside Watch. Not the career move I’d planned to make.
Still, it could have been worse. I could have been assigned to The Hill. Then I’d have to wear a suit.
“Good evening, Lorencz. You’re looking as professional as ever, I see. Is the red and green in your hair natural, or are you following some new Parkside fashion?”
I gave DeWitt a cool look and barely shifted out of his way, making sure he’d have to brush past me to get through the door.
Instead, he stopped and looked me up and down, sneering.
He was a big guy, DeWitt. Tall, broad, golden. A regular poster-boy for the Cislunar Watch. He and Medley looked ridiculous when they stood side-by-side. Whoever was in charge of Watch assignments had a sense of humor.
“I see you deigned to wear a uniform tonight,” he said, swatting rudely at my tattered watchman’s coat. I’d found it in a scrap shop that morning. The holes in its back suggested that its former owner had met an unfortunate end. “Has Guildmistress Carel seen you in these rags? With that hair? Is this how you plan to represent your peers in the Order?”
I grinned at him and blew smoke out the door, gauging it so the wind would waft it back into his face. Breathing my own secondhand smoke didn’t bother me, but DeWitt started to turn red.
“Law says I got to wear a uniform.” I smirked. “It don’t say I gotta look good in it.”
DeWitt drew in a breath, gaining about three inches of height and two in chest circumference.
“Get out and make yourself useful, you jumped-up punk,” he snarled. “I don’t want to see you smoking on taxpayers’ time.”
I sauntered out and worked a fast call across the Line. A grey shape coalesced out of sorcerous bale, its eyes shining like steel. The horses in front of the guard house screamed and tried to rear, straining against their hitched reins.
“Dammit –“
I swung up onto the balesteed’s back and left DeWitt and Medley to calm their animals.
Legally, I didn’t have to patrol. Punishment duty or not, the Order’s too powerful for its members to take marching orders from any lesser guild — it demands, and receives, special concessions. But given the choice between going on patrol and sitting around HQ listening to DeWitt rant, I’d take the streets.
Cits scuttled away from me into the shadows like cockroaches taking cover from the light. One nice thing about Dockside — there were precious few riders out at night, so I didn’t have to worry about my balesteed causing any accidents. The Order gets touchy about that kind of thing. I hate horses. Smelly, stupid beasts, always ready to bite or kick or throw you out of the saddle. Balesteeds, now, they’re silent, fast, and don’t leave you smelling like a pile of horse crap when you get off of them.
Plus, they don’t make me sneeze.
I sat and smoked and let my mind and my balesteed wander. There ain’t much a watch sorcerer needs to do, most nights, except be seen.
The night went by fast enough. I dropped into a few bars to make sure the patrons were keeping their noses clean, broke up a few fights, accepted a few free drinks, chased down a burglar with his arms full of stolen clothing, and torched a rapist. The last was more or less an accident. Everyone knows balefire’s a tricky thing to control.
“Balefire!” DeWitt roared, slamming my report down on the desk. “Dammit, Lorencz, you could have incinerated the whole city block!”
“Sure, if I was some untrained apprentice instead of a licensed sorcerer.”
“You did NOT need to use balefire to stop one man,” he shouted, striding around the desk and sticking his face into mine. I didn’t move.
“Don’t tell me my job, DeWitt,” I said. It annoyed me that I had to look up to meet his glare.
“I’m reporting this to the Order, Lorencz.”
“Yeah, yeah, report away,” I said, bored. “What’re they going to do? Assign me to punishment duty?”
“Get the hell out of here,” DeWitt growled. It was one of the few orders he could give that I was happy to fulfill.
The rapist’s victim had already left HQ, escorted home by a constable, for all the good that would do her. The damage was done, and it pissed me off. I was angry at DeWitt, but I was angrier at myself. If I’d gotten there five, ten minutes earlier, I could have saved her a lifetime of nightmares.
“Thank you, Lorencz,” Medley said neutrally, signing the bottom of the report and gesturing for the guards to carry the crispy corpse outside. “I think that will be sufficient tonight.”
“I knew what I was doing, Cap.”
“I’m sure you did, Lorencz,” he replied. He didn’t look up as I left.
I didn’t call up another steed. The balefire, the hysterical girl, the aftermath; it had all worn me out. All I wanted was a stiff drink and some sleep.
I stopped in the middle of the street to light my last cigarette with a brief balespark. Fog still covered the streets, but it was tinged with silver as the sun began to peek over the mountains. Dawn arrives late in Cislunar, but when it finally gets here, it comes in a burst of glory, golden sunlight spilling down the mountains and across the city to the coast.
Up and down the street, honest cits were getting up and getting ready to work. The smell of fresh bread drifted through the streets, and I could hear the friendly clatter of shutters opening and costermonger’s carts rattling over the cobblestones toward the markets.
I finished my smoke and began the long walk back to Southgate.
I was cutting through Jasper Street when a girl came stumbling out of an alley, breathing heavily and looking lost.
“Hey, kid. You in trouble?”
She looked at me, confused, and drew back in fear. She was dirty and her clothes had been half torn off. Scratches covered her face and limbs. Bruises darkened her neck, wrists, and ankles. I saw a streak of blood on her thighs, where her pants had been ripped. She was young. Barely adolescent. I pulled off my ragged watch coat and threw it to her.
She clutched the coat close to her, staring.
“Who–“
“Lorencz. Watch mage. Come on, I’ll take you to a guardhouse.”
She shook her head, jerking away.
“No! No — I can’t!”
“Okay, okay.” I held up my hands, scared she was going to run away. “Look, kid, if nothing else, let me take you to my flat. No funny stuff, just a chance for you to clean up and borrow some clothes. You want to get cleaned up, don’t you?”
The girl looked dubious. She was covered with goosepimples from cold, or fear, or both. Finally she nodded.
“Turn around,” she said.
Hoping she wasn’t going to pull a runner, I turned. A moment later she edged closer, my ragtag coat buttoned around her.
I took as many back streets as I could, fretted between wanting to get her to safety as fast as I could and keeping her out of sight. If she didn’t want to report an assault, I could only assume she had her reasons. I planned to try to talk her out of them, but not while she was standing half-naked in the middle of the street.
My flat’s on the third story of a narrow little boarding house on Heliotrope. The landlady’s the mother of a pal of mine, so she lets it to me cheap. I pulled open the door and ushered the girl in.
“There’s a chamberpot under the bed, and water in the bucket over there,” I said, pointing. She nodded and I turned my back, digging through the piles of clothes on the floor. For the first time, I regretted my shabby taste. Most everything I own is stained and torn, not much better than what she had on. Finally I found a reasonably intact pair of trousers and a spotty blue tunic I’d bought cheap from a market. The dye had run the first time I’d worn it out in the rain. I’d had some interesting patches of cerulean skin for a couple of days to complement my hair.
It wasn’t raining today, though, so I figured the shirt would be safe for her to wear.
“Here.” I tossed them over my shoulder. “Put these on.”
No answer, but I heard water splashing in the bucket. I unearthed a fraying fisherman’s sweater and pulled it on. The flat was cold, and she still had my coat.
With nothing to do but avoid looking her way, I poured myself a glass of whiskey, then wiped my second glass clean and poured her one, too.
I was halfway through my drink when I caught myself hoping I could help her.
Help her — right. Whatever had been done to her was already done. I closed my eyes a moment, feeling sick.
I don’t fool myself into thinking I’m some kind of knight in shining armor, but I hate feeling so sodding useless every time I run into a damsel in distress.
I drained the glass and poured a fresh shot. The room was starting to warm up; or maybe it was just me. I reached for another fag and remembered that I was out.
The noises had stopped. I glanced around. She was watching me.
She’d had to roll up the trousers to make them fit. The tunic was long, too, but it’d do. She’d pulled my constable’s coat over her shoulders.
Cislunar’s version of a damsel in distress — dirty and scruffy and careworn.
“Take this.” I walked over and handed her the other glass. “It’ll help.”
“Thank you.” She sipped it, her eyes never leaving my face. I stepped away and sat down on the side of the bed. Black-and-blue marks showed through the open neck of her tunic, but she’d washed the dirt and dried blood from her face and hands and legs.
“Sit down.” I gestured to the chair. She hesitated, then perched on the edge, still staring at me. She had big brown eyes, and I felt uncomfortable in their gaze.
“You want to tell me what happened?”
She shook her head.
“You want me to take you home?”
“Who are you?” she asked, for the second time.
“Arcady Lorencz,” I repeated. “I’m a Watch sorcerer.”
“What happened to your hair?”
“I got into a fight with a vat of dye.”
“Oh.” She fingered the brass Watch badge on the coat as her eyes roamed the room. “I thought sorcerers were rich.”
“Only the ones who dress nice.”
She took another sip. The whiskey was bringing a little color back to her cheeks. She was young — twelve, thirteen, I guessed, although I’ve never been great at guessing ages. Young, but not young enough.
“Who did this to you?” I gestured. Her hand rose to her neck, thin fingers brushing her bruises.
“Da–,” she said, and then bit her lip and looked back down again. I felt my muscles tightening and forced myself to relax. I didn’t want to scare her.
“He do that a lot?”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes now.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “I need … it’s important.”
“Yeah?” I stood. She flinched. I set my glass down on the table. Carefully. With control. “Let’s go talk to your pa, kid.”
“Please don’t,” she whispered. Her scratched hands tightened on the glass. “Do you … do you know anything about curses?”
I narrowed my eyes. “There ain’t no such thing as curses, and if that’s what he’s telling you –“
She flinched, and I bit my tongue, realizing my voice was rising.
“What about your ma?” I asked, tightly. “Where’s she?”
“She’s dead.”
“Any brothers or sisters?”
She shook her head. Of course not. This was just a little family matter between the two of them.
“Can I go now?” she asked, frightened.
“Not alone.”
“Please … I have to get back.”
“No you don’t,” I said firmly. “You let me deal with your pa. I told you. I work for the Watch.” And for the first time since I’d started the job, I didn’t mind saying that.
“No!” She looked up, startled. “No — please. Daddy does it for me. I need it, I’m cursed. I know I shouldn’t have run away, but they were biting and scratching and I was so scared that when the straps broke loose –“
“For crying out loud, kid, you’re not thinking right now! If your daddy told you that you were cursed, he was lying, and no girl deserves to get bit or scratched by him or any of his pervert friends.”
“But —“
I wished I could take a closer look and catalog exactly what he’d done to her, but I didn’t even try.
“Look, if you don’t want me talking to your pa, fine, but don’t go back to him. I’ll take you to a charity house. You can stay there until we can get you settled someplace safe.”
She shook her head.
“You want to stay here? It’s safe; I can doss someplace else today, and I’ll be working tonight. You’ll have the place to yourself. Give you some time to sort things out.”
She shook her head again.
“Please. I want to go home.” She bit her lip. ” I’ll bring your clothes back. But I want to go back to Daddy.” She sounded like she was going to cry.
“Hey, okay, okay!”
Too late. Tears slid down her cheeks. I grabbed a dirty shirt off the bed and tossed it to her. She took it with one hand and wiped her eyes.
“I’m s-s-sorry….” Her voice shook up and down the scale.
“You want to go home? Go home, then. I ain’t going to stop you.” I leaned over and took the glass before she dropped it. “But remember me, okay? Lorencz. I work at the Bitch Street station, and if you need any help, you come find me.”
She nodded, blowing her nose on my shirt. Looked like I’d have to do some wash soon.
“Go on.” I walked with her to the door, then remembered. “But I need my coat back.”
She slid it off her shoulders, dropped it on the floor, and then turned and ran.
She got a head start, but I’d lived on the streets before I’d Manifested, and I knew a thing or two about following people. I tracked her through alleys and shortcuts, kept an eye on her in the fishmarket crowds, and even managed to keep up on a short sprint through Torrent Street, although it left me gasping. Finally she turned, looked both ways, and then vanished into the little cobbler’s shop off Windward.
I hung around and listened for a few minutes, but I couldn’t hear anything. Then I drifted over to the neighboring shops and started asking some questions. Yeah, they told me, lots of screaming just a little past nightfall. Didn’t know why. Didn’t care. People mind their own business in Dockside.
By the time I got back to my flat, my jaw ached from grinding my teeth.
Sleeping during the day ain’t easy — folks shout and waggons clatter and kids holler and babies howl — but I didn’t wake up more than five or six times, so maybe I was starting to get used to the night shift. At last I dragged myself out of bed, pulled on some clothes, raked my fingers through my hair, and went out to buy firewood and tobacco. I was tired and irritable, but by the time I got back, started a fire, drank another glass of whiskey and rolled my first smoke of the night, I was starting to feel human again. I broke my fast with some bread that wasn’t too moldy, then pulled on my ragged uniform coat and headed the station.
“Guildmistress Carel wants to see you at dawn,” DeWitt said with satisfaction as I walked in. He tossed a letter across the room. I caught it and checked the seal. It was Carel’s maple leaf, all right. I couldn’t believe she was going to chew me out for torching a bloody rapist. I tucked the letter into my coat pocket without reading it. I’d been chewed out before. I knew the drill.
“Thanks a lot, pal,” I said, kicking a chair around and sitting ass-backwards. “Hey, Medley.”
“Good evening, Lorencz.” Medley walked over to hand me the night’s reports. I stuck a cigarette between my lips and lit it as I started to read.
“Same old.” I snapped the folder shut and handed it back to him. “Got anything worth my while?”
“Yeah, we thought you could help out with a little urban renovation by burning down a few neighborhoods,” DeWitt snapped. “Figured we’d clear out a couple of blocks, give the masons a winter commission.”
“Swell. Where’d you say you lived?”
“I don’t think we have anything that requires your immediate attention, Lorencz,” Medley said, sitting back down and setting the folder on top of a stack of similar folders. His desk was neat. His uniform was spotless. I wondered if he had a wife who pressed it for him, or if he did it himself. He looked like the kind of guy who might know how to use an iron without burning a hole through his shirt.
“Then I’m going on patrol,” I said, standing and shoving the chair away.
“Conjure your bloody spookhorse around the corner,” DeWitt snapped. I flipped him off. If I was going to get chewed out anyway, I might as well have some fun beforehand.
I left the Watch’s horses screaming and kicking behind me.
I dismissed the steed back across the Line when I reached the Prowl and made my way by foot through Experience Street. I don’t know who named the place, but the kind of experiences you can buy there ain’t any too nice. I slid a hand into my pocket and felt the weight of brass knuckles slide smoothly past my fingers. I passed the bars, the gambling houses, the brothels, and the fighting rings. People turned to look at me, then turned away again when they saw the brass badge on my lapel.
The fog was already thick by the time the sun’s last thin crimson edge vanished into the ocean. The cobbler’s shop was across the street. I reconned it a while, then tossed my cigarette into the dirt. Forget all those storybooks you’ve read; sorcerers can’t call anything across the Line that’ll make them invisible. But I’d been a cracksman’s kiddey before the Order had nabbed me, and I could still sneak well enough.
The door was unlocked, so I cracked it open and slipped inside. Nobody was tending the shop in front, but I could hear a man talking. I passed benches and tables of finished and half-finished footwear and peered into the back rooms.
She was there, wrapped in a blanket, wearing a thick leather collar and heavy leather straps that locked her to the bed. Leather manacles bound her hands and feet. Her father was testing the buckles on the collar.
Looked like the bastard had been putting his cobbling skills to work.
Daddy was a short, pudgy man, balding, with stained fingers and a workman’s leather apron tied over a linen tunic and wool trousers. His face was haggard and there were bags under his eyes. He looked harmless enough, except that he was tying his daughter to a bed. I glanced up. Wooden roof, wooden walls. Not a good place to start a fire, unless I wanted to give DeWitt more damage to crow over.
“There. That should hold,” Daddy said, leaning over and kissing her cheek. She gave him a fearful look from those big brown eyes and pulled her blanket closer. I was grinding my teeth again.
“Thank you, Daddy,” she said. “Don’t worry. I won’t run away this time.”
He gently put a leather gag into her mouth, clasping it behind her head. Then he sat down on the bed next to her, sliding an arm around her shoulders. She shuddered, looking up at the ceiling with her wide eyes.
I’d seen all I could stomach.
My first uppercut rocked Daddy’s head back and into the bedroom wall. The girl screamed as I grabbed her father by the apron front and yanked him off the bed, shoving him against the doorpost. Blood spilled from his lips and he gazed at me, dazed and bloody near unconscious. I kept my brass-covered fist cocked, just in case he wasn’t quite as addled as he looked.
“You — you don’t —” Daddy plucked at my ragged coat, his eyes wide, trying to speak through a mouthful of blood.
“You’re under arrest,” I said. I opened my hand and let him fall to the floor, then gave him a sharp kick just to make sure he stayed down. Then I turned to the girl.
Her mouth was white around the leather gag.
“Sorry, sweetie,” I said, yanking the gag free and unbuckling her collar. “I don’t care how much you love your pa. He’s got a date with the bailiff tonight.”
“No, no, don’t,” she pleaded, finding her voice and her tears at the same time. She grabbed the collar with both hands, as if to stop me. I pulled her manacled hands down. “You can’t, please, I –”
Then she broke off and screamed. I spun around and saw the clawed things, the transients, pushing against the Line, trying to get to our side.
“Oh, crap,” I whispered, as she screamed again and the Line between the worlds began to buckle. “You’re Manifesting.”
Then I turned and grabbed her. She shook and stared over my shoulder at the balecreatures trying to get to her, and I wrapped a balewall around the room, then thrust the gag back into her mouth and covered her eyes with one hand and forced her to be still, just like her Daddy had been doing.
And eventually the things with the claws and beaks and spikes and fangs gave up and stopped trying to push past the Line to reach her.
I sent Daddy to a sleazy physician I know who keeps odd hours and sells laudanum to addicts. We doped the girl up, and then I bought the cobbler a couple of stiff drinks and told him I was sorry for hitting him. He didn’t have to be a good guy about it, but he forgave me in exchange for getting the whole thing off his chest.
The change had started the same time as the girl’s monthlies, he said. Suddenly she was starting to act crazy, seeing lights and calling monsters and scaring the hell out of them both.
The poor sap was a devout churchgoer and he didn’t have the first idea what it meant to Manifest. He thought his daughter was cursed, and they both thought keeping her chained up at night would protect the neighbors until they could find a priest who could exorcise whatever evil spirits Yzyrchye had sent to attack her.
I told him there wasn’t any such thing as curses and explained about sorcerers Manifesting when they hit adolescence, and about the Line and the transients who live in the mutable bale beyond it, hungering for fear, pain, and blood.
All of which a newly menstruating girl who thought she was under a curse would have had in abundance.
He was leery about it all, because churchgoers are never very happy about sorcery, but in the end he was mostly relieved that she wasn’t under attack by the Lord of Hell. I told him the Order would put her into boarding school for a while and teach her how to control her new talent, and she’d be free to visit him every holyday and during the semester breaks.
Then I hung around the shop for the rest of the night, letting him get some sleep while I watched over the girl and kept an eye on the Line.
When the sky started to brighten, I left him standing in the doorway of his shop, waving good-bye. He wasn’t a criminal at all; just a worried little fat man with an ugly bruise under his chin and a daughter who was going to be a sorcerer. And I wasn’t any knight in shining armor, but I was the night-shift Watch sorcerer of Dockside, and if I spoke real nice to Guildmistress Carel and told her all about her brand-new guildmember, maybe, just maybe, she’d let me keep the job a little longer.