Chapter 28
Working with Heart ran contrary to Slant's instincts. Shrinking back just out of sight didn't work when you wanted to catch someone's eye, needed to be seen. It was uncomfortable and disconcerting, standing proudly in the light after so long hiding in the dark.
He was just as conflicted about staying his hand when he saw crimes. Muggings, thefts, and assaults were ignored to protect their cover. Each time, Slant's grubby hands were gripped into shaking fists, and he bit his lip hard. Slant told himself Heart knew what he was doing, over and over.
With their age difference, they were posing as a father and son who'd lost their house in Sol's Haven. It was a worryingly easy story for people to accept, and each nod of sympathy made Slant grateful that he'd found an income: many they met had befallen the fate they pretended to. Whilst the Stations had expanded some, they weren’t large enough for many.
Heart's plan started with them begging for work, asking if anyone needed day labour, telling anyone who passed that they were cheap and willing. It was demeaning and degrading, but they weren't the only ones doing so. Sometimes, go-betweens for Merchants would walk down the main street and pick people up for work, though they eschewed Slant and Heart as unreliable newcomers.
After a week of failure, father and son visited a grubby tavern to buy forlorn drinks. Heart had talked to a barmaid, poured molten lies into the mould: said his wife was a stay-at-home Contegon killed in the Second Invasion, and Slant’s employer had been drafted. That added polish to their lie, and gained the sympathy of everyone present. They were established, then, a part of the community.
On the way to the pub, they'd not acted on five crimes. Their journey back yielded a further six to ignore. Slant's lip bled by the time they got home.
They slept each night in the slender Custodian hideout. Hooks in the ceilings allowed them to hang strange string bed that cupped the body. Heart always collapsed into his like it was the most natural sleeping arrangement possible. It took Slant much longer to learn not to turn over, and to arrange the blanket so his skin didn't rub viciously, but he got to sleep eventually each night.
Then, one day, Heart woke him with a rough shake. “Up. Now,” Heart said.
Almost no light snuck into the slender, coddled room. Slant couldn't tell if he'd been out for two hours or seven. He’d woken before the older man every day so far, which spared him the blushes of getting out of his bed. As before, the moment he moved, the string bed turned traitor and threw him to the ground. Only his good reactions prevented him from smacking into the floor.
“Damn,” Heart said with a grin, “seeing babes falling from their hammocks is the only fun I get when working with them.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Slant said as he stood.
“You should be,” he said, his grin fading. “Right, grab some salted pork and we'll get started.” With his rough finger, he pointed at a small tin on the floor, where his breakfast awaited.
Slant knelt and plucked strips of bone dry meat from the tin. He bit into the salty, chewy flesh, savoured it.
“What are we doing today?” Slant asked when done.
“We’ve done enough begging. Today, you will map the area west of here, at the edges of Ocean's Edge and Farmer's Park,” Heart growled. “I'll take the other half. Mark any discarded Seed gear, any potential Zones, and tell anyone who recognises you that you're looking for work.”
“We're scouting for the next phase, then?”
“Well done on noticing the obvious. I can see why you were chosen.”
Slant soured for a couple of seconds. Then he saw the funny side and laughed, said, “Yeah, that wasn't the brightest thing I've ever said, was it?”
“I hope not,” Heart replied. “Now, start searching.”
Slant and Heart had to leave carefully: it was vital no one saw them in this secret place. The Custodian who'd planned this hovel had placed mirror fragments against the opposite building so they can see along the alley. Heart opened the whisper-quiet door and used those shards to confirm the way was safe.
Mapping an area carefully, quietly checking the rears of buildings, searching for clues, was more in Slant's comfort area than than story-building. He moved north first to check those buildings closest to Aureu's walls. The relative regularity of Contegon patrols there, so close to the city’s limits, meant those buildings were worth more, were bought and maintained rather than abandoned. That made his search a waste of time, but he needed to be thorough.
To the west, he found more likely candidates for Zones. He snuck up to them to listen to their inhabitants, checked the streets around them and the rubbish the Raggedy Men who scoured the streets for anything to sell didn't care for. When this turned up nothing, he continued west, then swung round and back east, to search the southern houses.
He snaked through poor, ignored, and abandoned streets for hours before he found a rough spoon warped by repeated burnings. He turned it over, saw blackened metal where his reflection should be: this had been used to prepare Seed. The spoon was discarded in the middle of the street, could have come from a dozen houses nearby. He checked each with care, but the search was fruitless.
Slant wasn't disappointed for long. Twenty minutes later, he came across a pile of stained drinking glasses. He sniffed one and found the metallic tang of Seed was still there.
Once, Slant had watched a Zoner prepare Seed during a deal between two Gangs: the buyer had wanted test the product, unsure whether he could trust her new supplier. The quickest, easiest way to prepare the foul gum was to melt it over a spoon then dissolve it in water. The Zoner had done this with astonishing care, her shaking hands becoming perfectly still as she prepared the drink, then sipped it. She'd collapsed, convulsing. Then a fight broke out. That was when Slant intervened.
He looked up, checking he was not being watched, then searched the building the glasses rested beside. There were no further signs, no burnt spoons, no piles of firewood or the white paper Seed tended to come in. The collapsed floors and staircases meant no one lived inside.
Disappointment and frustration began to set in. Those glasses were the clearest sign of a Zone yet, but they too told him nothing. He rested against the wall, and took a deep breath. He needed patience, needed to check everywhere before losing hope.
But what did the pile of glasses mean then? Some were cracked and shattered, particularly those at the bottom. Carefully, he picked through the pile to examine the shards. He had assumed that the thin, cheap glasses had broken during the cooking process, but he realised the glasses had been thrown into this pile.
Then a theory clicked into place: Zoners were careful and suspicious, so they would do anything to not advertise their Zone's location. But Zones produce a lot of waste: ashes, broken glasses, warped spoons, and so on. What better way of getting rid of their waste than dropping it off elsewhere, creating false, suspicious Zones for people like Slant to find?
The lie of the glasses suggested they had been thrown by someone approaching from the south. He followed it and eventually found a small pile of matches down a side street. They were rough, cheap, and splintered, the kind a Zoner would live on. This pile was not near any windows, so these matches hadn’t been discarded carelessly. The houses around it were boarded or rotten, empty. Whoever discarded the matches didn't care about the logic of doing so, further validating the idea that Zoners discarded them.
Next, he found burned spoons. This took more searching, checking carefully down the narrow squeezes between buildings, and looking over piles of discarded, broken furniture. He eventually found it under a broken chair. He was getting close if the Zoners were now taking such care with their waste.
Pure luck led him to this well-organised Zone. He was searching for more waste when footsteps approached. He pressed himself into a doorway to his left, trying to remain hidden as the people passed.
Slant had to stop himself gasping when they began to talk about the spoons. “I'm telling... No, I'm saying... No
, I'm telling you, you've got to move the spoons. Got to move the spoons tomorrow. They're obvious. They're dangerous, dangerous as a Disciple, a Disciple, I'm telling you,” a woman stammered.
“Why don't you go and throw them yourself?” the other woman replied. “Go back and do it right now rather than harping on at me.”
“It's not, no, it isn't my job,” the first woman replied, passing by Slant. “If I do your job, Sol might confuse us. I don't want... No, I don't need your bad luck and evil to... I need him to burn away my sins, not yours. I’d hate that. That would be bad.”
“We both have the same sins, you silly bitch.”
“No, no, we don’t. We don’t. Different sins. Different sins.”
“How do you reckon that one?”
Slant glanced round the doorway. Two women wearing very little walked by, one small enough to be a child, the other more than six feet tall with a shaven head. The tall one's hands shook and jived as she walked. Her compatriot shot her regular looks of disgust.
They continued to bicker as Slant followed them, taking great care to remain hidden. From what he could gleam, they sold their bodies. The shorter one presumably attracted a specific sort of client, which formed the basis of the taller woman's argument that they had different levels of sin. He didn't care too much for their conversation, but used it to follow them.
After a few minutes, they got to an enormous house with repaired brickwork and fortified doors. The women knocked three times, the last two in rapid succession. Someone opened the door only a crack.
“It's us, you dope,” the gruff prostitute said. “Let us in.”
“No, no, we've got to give… have to let them have the password, haven't we?”
“Yeah, because there's always going to be a painted short-arse and a twitching idiot at their door,” she growled. “It must happen all the time, every day... Just fucking let us in, Brute!”
The door was opened, and they entered. Slant waited to see if they would come back out: this could, after all, be a visit to a client. He remained still, quiet, hidden. After an hour, he went to look inside.
This potential Zone was very well-maintained: the windows were whole, and the boards over the back door were strong. Efforts had even been made to repair the roof, though the Artificers involved had done the work as cheaply as possible. People lived here, people who needed proper shelter throughout the house. And the most likely community that included sex workers and tight scrutiny on visitors was a Zone.
One of the windows at the back was open, probably the kitchen window, and a steady stream of steam left it. Slant snuck as close as he dared and sniffed the air cautiously: it was subtle, but he could definitely smell Seed. This was it; this was the organised Zone.
Pleased, he melted away and continued his search. He found two more Zones with less consideration and dignity, and marked both as candidates, but neither seemed as likely a point to start their investigations as the organised one.