Reciprocity Page 5

  We slipped inside the storage room, and I chained it shut behind us with the padlock. Maria started to say something, but I put a finger to my lips and pressed my ear to the door. Banging, voices, and things getting tipped over echoed from the storefront.

  “The police?” Maria whispered.

  “Cops or crooks, doesn’t matter right now.” I turned from the door into the dim interior of Piet’s storeroom. Pallets of stuff made an orderly grid, and shelves along the walls reached up into the gloom. Piet was too cheap to put electrics in, so the only light came from dingy half-windows, high up, and something like a kerosene lamp in the middle of the room. I had a feeling the ladder was on the opposite end of the room, but there was one stop I wanted to make first. “That chain won’t hold them for long if they get the idea to come looking here.”

  Maria followed my lead through the musty storeroom. “What on earth is all this?”

  “All kinds of things. Some of it is even legal. Piet does some straight business in pawning, but mostly he fences.”

  “In here? There’s hardly room, and it’s so dark.”

  I frowned. “Not that kind of fencing. He buys stolen goods and sells them for a profit. He turns the goods around pretty quick, usually, so I’m kinda surprised to see all these barrels and crates.”

  We came to a gap between two stacks of canvas-covered crates, where the buttery glow of kerosene was strongest. A metal tripod stood in the space between four pallets, and a brazier hung from its legs. A little stove sat under the shallow bowl, keeping the brazier good and hot. Long-handled pokers, scoops, and other tools stood in a rack nearby, and a set of tongs lay on the ground, like someone had dropped it. Molten metal simmered away in the brazier, and half a length of gold chain melted into the soup. Impurities rose to the top.

  “That’s far enough,” a voice ground out. It was a small, gravelly sort of voice, the kind that might come out of a child, if she smoked cigars for twenty years. “Mitts empty and out so’s I can see ‘em.”

  “Hello, Sofie,” I said. My hands went up, and my stomach dropped through my skirt. I glanced at Maria, and her hands were empty, too, thank the gods. “What’s with the cannon?”

  Ladoni were almost always indentured to a human employer. By ancient tradition, the debts were hereditary and nearly impossible to pay off. It wasn’t exactly slavery, but only because people called it something else. Someone like Sofie would work for a token salary for someone like Piet until she died, or until he did. If Piet knocked off first, Sofie’s contract would go to Piet’s next of kin, or to the Church. If Sofie died first, the debt would pass to her children. Even if Sofie managed to buy out her debt, she wasn’t allowed to own property or a business or anything like that, so she’d be back to working for someone. It was a neat and nasty little system that kept the ladoni sewed up tight. I didn’t like it, and I’d said so once or twice, but it didn’t make a ladoni love me any more than they loved any other human.

  Not that I could blame them for painting us all with the same brush. Humans did it to them all the time.

  Sofie was pushing forty, didn’t quite come up to my shoulder, and had high cheekbones and a button nose. People underestimated Sofie, girlish face like that. She had a suspicious frown on that face now, which didn’t encourage me too much. The sawn-off coach gun she pointed at us encouraged me less. The shotgun wasn’t quite as tall as she was and would probably break both her wrists if it went off. Then again, it would also make hamburger out of me and Maria, so I counted at least three reasons to be careful.

  “Couldn’t be sure who was creeping back here,” she said. “Didn’t sound like Piet.”

  “Piet’s tied up right now,” I said. “Even if it was him, I couldn’t blame you for bringing out the artillery. Might be he deserves a bellyful of lead.”

  “Maybe that’s true, but it don’t matter none. I’m his for the duration. It’s good to see you, though.” Sofie peered at Maria and tucked the gun closer to her hip. “I hope it’s good to see you, anyway. Who’s this?”

  “A friend, Sofie, and harmless. We just need to get out of here. Roof ladder.” I shrugged with my hands raised, which probably looked ridiculous. “Help us out?”

  Sofie pursed her lips. “Why shouldn’t I just hold you here until Piet checks up on the ruckus?”

  “He is indisposed. Possibly—” The faint crash of breaking glass from the front of the store made Maria stop for a moment. “Possibly entertaining unwelcome guests even now. Perhaps the police, or perhaps Rademaker gangsters; we don’t know.”

  The way Sofie winced made me think she was more upset about Rademakers coming in, never mind that she would be in a world of trouble for having the gun and for melting down stolen jewelry and coins. She sucked on her front teeth, and then finally pointed the gun away from us. “Yeah, okay.”

  She plucked a hand-rolled cigarette from behind her ear and lit it from the brazier. She plugged it into the corner of her mouth and said, “So Rademaker finally caught up with that bum, huh? Guess I’m in for it now.”

  “Piet’s sewn up with Rademaker?” I asked, lowering my hands nice and slow. “What kind of biz?”

  Sofie cradled the cannon in one arm and waved her cigarette around at the pallets of barrels and crates with the other. “That filthy aker dust.”

  “The whole room?” Maria said, her eyes wide. “Full of that ruinous stuff?”

  “Hell.” Sofie blew a stream of smoke in Maria’s general direction. “Not even Piet is stupid enough to hold that much. These two pallets is it, and that’s more than anyone with any sense should try to hold. The other pallets have barrels of flour, crates filled with sawdust, things like that. Way Piet tells it, keeping aker in a room full of harmless stuff is a good way to hide it.”

  I lifted a corner of canvas with my foot and looked idly at a crate but kept my hands in my pockets. No sense leaving prints on the stuff, after all. Rows and rows of little brown glass bottles sat in a straw-lined grid, their brittle corks staring at me like a battery of guns. Cheap blue mimeographed labels peeked up over the edge of the crate.

  “It wouldn’t be such a bad idea, if he was the only one who knew about it. But I guess he didn’t shift all these pallets by himself, or do any of the inventory work.”

  Sofie carefully plucked the cigarette out of her mouth, sneered, and spat into the brazier. It hissed and smoked.

  Angry voices echoed dimly from the front of the building. Too dull to make out the words, but sharp enough to tell the owners weren’t there for tea and cookies.

  I squatted on my heels, making Sofie just a little taller than me, and spoke soft. “Come on, Sofie. It’ll save us some time getting out of here if you showed us the roof exit. Come with us if you want. Piet’s gonna take a fall. You don’t have to fall with him.”

  Sofie shook her head, her face as heavy as a moon. “I go or I stay, it doesn’t matter.” She gave me a level stare, then hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “Exit’s that way. You’ll find the ladder in the corner. Don’t worry about old Sofie, kid. She’ll find a way.”

  “All right. If you’re sure.”

  “I said it, didn’t I? Look, I don’t know why you’re in this business, but you got too good a heart for it. You’re taking in stray choir girls,” she said, jerking her chin at Maria, “or whatever she is. That’s not something a crook does. You take my advice and get yourself out, one way or another.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I replied, nodding. “I’d sure like to try.”

  “Don’t humor me, kid. I’m too old for that.” She killed the flame on the stove. The molten metals glowed, casting her face in strange shadows. “I’ll give you one more for free, though: Piet’s not dealing with Rademaker directly, but you could have guessed that. There’s this posh fella comes around here, a middleman. Don’t know his name, but he’s tall, slick blond hair, sharp tongue like a mouthful of razors. Talks funny.” She jerked her chin at Maria, who was frowning hard now. “Up-country swell, I guess.”<
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  “Thanks, Sofie. I’ll remember it.”

  She waved us out of there. We took two steps out, but when I turned to ask her something else, the little gap where four pallets met was empty. The bubbling metal in the brazier started to cool, and the tools stood where Sofie had left them. The shotgun and Sofie were gone.

  * * *

  I shoved open the trapdoor to the roof, and daylight poured in, blinding me briefly. When I could see again, I saw that Piet had rigged up canvas tarpaulins all over the roof, some a little higher than two meters. Garden boxes sat under those tarps, all choked with weeds and dry, sad soil. I never knew Piet to be much of a gardener, but having this rig set up gave him an excuse to hide from the aerostats. I scanned the skies, looking for any aerostats that might be looking back at me. Two might have been able to see us, possibly three, but I had to hope their watchstanders weren’t looking at this particular building.

  “All right,” Maria said. “Where do we go next?”

  I pointed past the edge of the rooftop to a sweep of rust-spotted iron that made up the Cirkel tower. The tower wasn’t precisely adjacent to the pawn shop. The two-meter gap between the building’s edge and the Cirkel tower could be a hilarious jump to make, but the tower’s half-meter wide I-beam made the landing a little less fun. A girl could get herself hurt, falling three stories and hitting every support beam and gantry on the way down.

  Some of Piet’s customers—the less legitimate kind, anyway—visited the shop in a fairly unconventional way. They’d take an unscheduled stop on the Cirkel, shimmy down the tower, hop across the gap, and drop their goods down the roof exit. Piet or Sofie would finish the transaction, and the cops in the balloons overhead were either none the wiser or had been judiciously paid off beforehand.

  “That tower. The jump is easy, but sticking the landing is harder. Think you can manage it?”

  “Do you suppose that I cannot?” Maria sniffed in derision, but her face paled. “After you, of course.”

  I winked at her. “Just do what I do.”

  I aimed my feet at the edge of the building, took three fast steps, and pushed off the ledge of the walkway with my right foot. A moment of rushing wind and eye-watering terror later, and I was on the other side, my fingertips just over the edge of the I-beam, the rubber soles of my boots gripping the tarnished iron. Safe as houses.

  A laugh escaped my lips, and I shook my head. Not too old for it, not yet. I turned to the closest tool chest, pried it open, and found the rolled-up length of ropes and planks. The hooks at one end were a little rusty, but they’d hold. I wasn’t really about to have Maria jump over. The idea was I’d chuck the rope bridge over to Maria, have her set the hooks, and let her walk across. After all, the guys who came to Piet’s rooftop to fence their gear wouldn’t jump across with armloads of silks and jewelry. Or barrels and crates stuffed with aker dust. I’d figured she’d balk at jumping the gap or get the idea there was a better way to do it, and we’d get to have a laugh.

  I heard three fast steps behind me, a ladylike grunt, and my smile died. Over she came, eyes wide open, teeth set, arms pinwheeling wildly. Maria landed in the exact middle of the I-beam—she could have split a dime in half if I’d laid one down—and she made it look one hell of a lot prettier than I probably did. But all the grace in the world didn’t put traction on pawn shop boots. She’d managed a quarter pirouette on her landing, letting me whip my arms around her waist and haul her back. She just about doubled over, like she’d been punched in the gut.

  It was nothing but dumb luck that kept us both alive just then. We tilted neither to the left nor the right, neither into empty space nor into the array of crossbeams and guy wires. I sat straight down, right down the middle, and Maria landed hard in my lap.

  My ass hurt from the fall, and my arms ached from the sudden effort. I leaned forward and rested my cheek on Maria’s back for a few seconds. Her breath came fast and deep, and I knew she was staring into the guts of the tower, at all the cables and guy wires and things she would have mangled herself on if she’d fallen off the crossbeam. She laid her fingers on my hands, still clasped around her abdomen, and a nervous laugh tumbled out of her.

  “Upon my word,” she said, and then tittered again. “That was most invigorating.”

  “I wonder why I don’t push you right off this tower,” I murmured into her robe.

  “I beg your pardon, Kaeri. I didn’t catch that,” she replied, giddy laughter sugaring her voice.

  “I said, can you get up without knocking either of us off?”

  It seemed to take all day for us to stand up, since neither of us was too keen to fall to our deaths, and it paid to be careful. It also meant an awkward hand on someone else’s hip here, and foreheads knocked together there. If we weren’t running away from something nasty, I supposed it could’ve been a little sweet. When we finally got to our feet, she faced me, her hand on my wrist, her mouth open like she wanted to say something.

  Words, damned practical words, spilled out of my mouth first. “You feel that, the vibrations in your feet?”

  She gave me a lopsided smile. “Yes. Is that our train?”

  “It is. That ladder behind you will take us to the maintenance platform. Legitimate passengers will be boarding at Prosperity Station, just up the block, but we’ll be able to get on anyway.”

  Maria tiptoe-turned and made a painfully slow shuffle-step to the ladder. I clenched my fists and teeth, willing her to hurry the hell up already. When she finally got her hands on the ladder, her shoulders relaxed, and she started her way up.

  I followed her. Halfway up, the iron under my hands and feet buzzed and shook even more, and the blunt-nosed engine of the suspended locomotive came into view overhead. Flakes of rust pattered on my shoulders and hands as the train rattled by, slowing from a jog to a walk.

  “Kaeri?” Maria said, her voice pitched high over the noise. “Is this quite safe?”

  “Staying on the ladder? Hell no, not safe. Hustle up; get on that platform.”

  Maria climbed faster, her duelist’s calves flashing under her robe. She eeled through the hatch in the iron grate floor of the platform and hopped off the ladder as the Cirkel slowed to a juddering stop. When I got off the ladder, Maria was breathing easier than I was and dusted her hands of red, flaked iron.

  She hitched the map case higher on her shoulder and placed one hand on the side of the train car. The wood-paneled cars were painted white once, but they had long since gone gray and peeling. Hydraulics hissed, and I could smell the sharp lightning stink of the electric monorail over our heads.

  “What now?” Her hand ran over the side of the car, and she didn’t seem to mind the peeling paint. “I cannot imagine a porter will welcome us.”

  “Who needs a porter?” The door was locked, but some budget-conscious passenger had broken the window long before. I reached in and undogged the latch. “After you.”

  Chapter 4

  Maria took the window seat, and I didn’t mind. It’d be rotten for me to stop a tourist from getting an eyeful of what people in the Lower saw every day. I wondered what she thought of the place now that she could see more of it at one time. The yellow-belching smokestacks of the Grindstone, the fly-blown abattoirs of the Slaughter. Just about the only nice part of the Lower Terrace was still three or four stops away, and even the beaches and arcades of the Zuider Strand were probably not much to look at. Not compared to the splendors of the towers in the Middle and Upper Terraces, anyway.

  I sat back in my seat as the train lurched and rattled into motion. Why should I care what the girl thought of the Lower, anyway? It wasn’t any of my business. The Lower was what the Lower was. There wasn’t any reason for me to feel embarrassed about it—no reason to feel like someone fancy had dropped by my filthy hotel room unannounced.

  Besides, I had a job to do. Deliver this package to Lewis, do something with this lost little lamb, and get back to the Exedra Arms. Maybe curl up with a bottle of gin and take a two-day
long nap. That wouldn’t be so bad.

  “Kaeri, this view is remarkable, truly.” Maria pressed her palms to the window, and I could see her eyes widen in the reflection on the glass. “From my rooms in Bacigalupi Tower, you cannot see the city at all. My balcony only looks onto the training courtyard and a prettyish little tulip garden. From this train you could see all of the Lower Terrace within a few hours!”

  “Not sure why you’d want to. It’s a bit low-rent compared to the places you’re used to, isn’t it?”

  She looked back at me, her eyes flat, her enthusiasm dampened a little. “I don’t measure beauty in guilders and cents. Do you?”

  I knew a challenge when I heard it. “The pious thing to say is yes, of course. Glory reflects in gold, and righteousness in silver, all that stuff.”

  “But you are not terribly pious, are you?”

  “No one’s perfect.”

  Aquamarine eyes searched my face and measured me carefully. I propped an ankle on my knee and gave her that easy smile I gave anyone trying to decide if they could trust me. The easy smile wasn’t so easy this morning.

  Keeping your mouth shut was one of the most useful things someone could do when it came to getting the upper hand in a conversation. The quiet made the other guy uncomfortable, and they’d start chattering just to make themselves feel better. Sometimes the chatter was pointless, but sometimes they dropped something useful, too. I’d thought I was pretty good at that game, but Maria was a pro. If I had a pencil, I’d have taken notes.