We walked out to the edge of town, where Sticktown collapsed into the Ring to investigate the scene of the altercation that Buster Brand told us about in our interrogation. As we approached the greasy point on the map that Buster Brand had indicated, we noticed something draped over a street sign next to an otherwise unremarkable alley. Somebody had hung a piece of cotton cloth, a discarded shirt from the looks of it, over the street sign. A red circle with an X had been drawn on the cloth by an unknown would be artist in a shaky hand.
"What is this place?" I asked, but I suspected I already knew.
"This looks like one of Rudy's aforementioned blood markets." Harbinger answered, confirming my suspicion.
Nestled in the crowded alley way, a line of cloth roofed stalls had sprung up. I could see people with intravenous plastic tubes attached to their arms, and realized that they were giving blood. Ice filled coolers loaded with bags of the collected blood stood piled wherever ever room would allow.
I pointed and Harbinger said, "How are they refrigerating the blood over the long term? That much refrigeration would be expensive."
"That much blood will be worth a lot of sticks and stones," I said, "They can probably afford refrigeration."
"But where would they get it without arousing suspicion?" Harbinger said.
"Is that cigarette ash?" I asked pointed at the ground.
Harbinger nodded, "Our boy Mr. Hus smoked 108s did he not? And Mr. Brand smoked Gemsboks, if I recall. Can you give that mess a sniff and see if it smells like somebody smoked Buddhist incense there?"
"Why make your assistant do that?" I asked, "Seems a little menial."
"Oh no, not at all. I just don't have a great sense of smell after years of using pipeweed as an astral projection aid."
"So this is less tease the new guy and more a lesson on the cost of smoking?" I asked with a smile.
"Something like that, now what does that ash smell like?"
I bent down and gave the pile of ash a sniff, "It doesn't smell like much. I think the ash has sat here a little while. But I can still get a whiff of incense, so I think it is ash from a 108."
"That suggests that this is the right place."
"This isn't the place. This is the starting line," I corrected, "Now we have to find the trail."
"Tracking isn't really my forte," Harbinger said, "I tend to use my Spirit Band to find people. Rudy and his Ghost boys are quite good at digging stuff up. That's one of the things that made your father's offer quite attractive. He was always a great tracker, he once tracked Perry Mueller- this unpleasant bully from our youth- halfway across town and straight through the ring. And when we found him, well let's just say that your father is a better scrapper than the two of us put together. Hmm, I'm digressing. In either case, I've always known your father was an excellent tracker, well not always but for quite some time, and he indicated that you were an excellent pupil."
"I am all a goggle. That was a whole lot of talking to ask me to track this kid Buster Brand lost. You realize we don't even know for certain that this is connected."
"In the shadowlands, everything is connected. Stories don't like extraneous details."
"We aren't living in a story Harbinger."
"Everyone lives in a story. I just co-author mine."
At the end of the alleyway I noticed a group of Chinese people, all dressed in worn out ill fitting clothes, lined up to give blood. A Chinese gentleman stood beside them, dressed smartly in a fitted burgundy pinstripe bespoke suit with a solid black tie and a gold tie pin. He looked towards us as I watched, and took a drag on a Jakarta black cigarette and blew a few casual smoke rings. He wore his hair in a trendy pompadour haircut with sideburns that reached down the edges of his chin. He seemed to me to be watching over them.
"That looks like a connection to our human smuggling ring," Harbinger said, noticing the group at nearly the same time as I did.
Something caught my eye, movement in the crowd that didn't match the ebb and flow of the crowd. Somebody was moving towards us, and trying to keep out of sight as they did it.
"We're being hunted," I said to Harbinger," They aren't nearly as stealthy as they think they are, but they aren't bad. Which means we'll probably have to fight. Which means I'm going to be late for my date. And she really was quite."
"I'm sure she'll understand."
"The cute ones don't have to understand. They have other people waiting in line."
"Shall we confront them?" Harbinger asked.
"Here? On their turf, with this many people who may be sympathetic to them instead of us? No, definitely not. Besides a fight here is goignt o ruin any tracks."
"Do you have another suggestion?"
"From how they're acting, they want to isolate us. I say we let them. I'll try and track the kid that Buster Brand lost. It's probably unrelated to our cases, but a lost child is still a lost child. And that will, if I can get a good track, lead us away. With any luck I'll be able to pick a point to trigger their ambush in a way the gives advantage back to us."
"Sounds good in theory. How confident are you on you ability to pull it off."
"Well, let's see. I have to find old tracks in a high traffic area. Follow said tracks, but still control the terrain and path to prevent a group of killers from ambushing us before we're ready. Find a suitable coutner abush point along the path without showing my hand to our pursuers. And do this all before I'm late for my date."
"So?"
"It will all go horribly wrong," I said, "But I may be able to control the wrong and aim at it them. I don't have any better options. You?"
"None. And your ideas sound exciting. Let's proceed."
I looked at the ash and tried to ignore the incongruous movements at the corner of vision, as the figures shadowing us moved and watched. There was scattered ash and footprints everywhere. The area showed evidence of being a high traffic area. I rolled my eyes at my own observation. I was standing in an illegal market thronging with people, of course the area was high traffic. What I needed was an area where a child would travel, but an adult wouldn't; an area that was also conducive to capturing tracks, but sheltered from forces that would wear the track away.
I can see Harbinger trying to look where I am looking. He shook his head, " This is hopeless. Look at all the tracks. You aren't going to find anything."
I ignored him for moment and scanned the area with a soft gaze, not focusing on anything, looking instead for something that matched what I needed. Then I saw my target area. A low fence built from tubular metal bars that rose roughly four feet above the ground with wide spaces between riser beams. A child could easily dart under or through, but an adult would have to climb over in awkward fashion. Were I a child trying to escape a large adult chasing me, I would run under that metal fence.
I approached the fence and scanned the packed dry mud and sand until I found what I had hoped to find, a small clear shoe print, with pressure releases deformation consistent with a child running at full speed. The heel was raised slightly and the shape and lack of tread design made me think that the shoe was classic Mary Jane style shoe.
"I have a direction and a gender," I said aloud.
"Really?" Harbinger said in surprise, "Explain please."
I pointed to the fence, "Small child in mary janes with a slight heel went running under that fence at full tilt. I don't see any other children around here. And if I were fleeing from an adult, that's the obstacle I'd choose. So unless the child in question has a mother has been trying to make her son look like a pretty little flower, our target is a little girl in impractical shoes for running. She won't have gone far in those shoes. I have worn them, for familiy photos. They break if try to leap over dry creek beds. They break if you try to climb trees. They break if you kick your unpleasant cousin Audrey. They break and they break and they break, and eventually people stop putting you in them and start buying you sturdy riding boots."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Purely hypothetical." I answered, "Our hunters are getting antsy. Let's start moving before they decide to ambush in a crowd."
"Lead the way."
The trail had been very nearly obliterated by the constant traffic of the Ring and the Blood Market. I followed the scattered scraps of track and sign by looking up from the most recent track and scanning round for the best place for a little girl to escape a large and slightly clumsy man. I then moved to that area and looked for any sign that might confirm my suspicion. If I found nothing, I returned to the last sign and tried again. In this way, Harbinger and I walked forward and backwards slowly out of the Ring and back towards Sticktown and more particularly back towards the neighbourhood where Victoria lived. As we closed on the transition out from the Ring and back into Sticktown itself, our pursuers pulled back. I hadn't got a clean look at them, but they moved pretty well. They pulled back and I lost them for a moment, and then spotted the tell tale movement of people moving out of sync with the crowd and the moved around and past us.
"Our hunters don't want us getting back into town, they don't want us getting where the law might intervene." I said, "They don't want any witnesses who might might talk to the police. I think they might actually want to kill us."
"And this is precisely why your father thought that you would be useful to my practice."
"They're ahead of us," I said, "Do you want to try and change direction, or take them straight on?"
"Do you want to try and evade a group of thugs inside the Ring?" he asked.
"These guys are better than regular thugs, gang equivalent of Special Forces I imagine," I added.
"Can you manage them?" He asked.
"In theory? Yes, that the plan," I said, "But no plan survives contact with the enemy. You never know what your opponent knows with certainty, and you never know what else is going to arrive to ruin everyone's plans."
Our pursuers did not hide as we approached. Five figures, all of Asian descent; two men and three woman dressed in leather riding jackets with red cloth bands tied around their right biceps. All five were carrying bludgeons of some sort, one held a baseball bat, another a billy club, another a ball peen hammer, The other two both carried sledgehammers.
The two with the sledge hammers barred the way through with out stretched arms and crossed hammers. The woman with the ball peen hammer stood behind them and addressed us, "You can tell Perun has his cronies that our Lady has refused his demands. He is not in control of Sticktown, Nobody challenges the Red Flag Fleet and lives!"
Harbinger spread his arms wide and lowed his head, "Do we look like Peruns lackeys? Where are our horribly tacky Nordic tattoos? Do we have that trademark glassy eyed and slack jawed expression that suggests Perun initiates his boys with a kick to the testicles and sharp blow the pre-frontal cortex?"
"We saw you snooping about. Who else would you be if not the upstarts of Perun? He has tried too many times to enforce his bravado upon the Fleet and we will not accept it. We will not bow to you."
"You don't have to bow to us," Harbinger continued, "We are with Perun. We aren't with anybody. You can just let us go, it's not a problem."
"He may be telling the truth," The woman with the bat said, "They look nothing like Perun's idiots."
"Then they are something worse, spies or new rivals or police." The hammer woman answered, "Kill them!"
The two men with the sledge hammers stepped forward moving to either side of us.
"And here we go." I muttered, making a quick assessment of their positions, "Do we care if they die?" I asked Harbinger.
"We're close enough to the town line that they might be found if we didn't hide the bodies. And I'd prefer not to kill unless it's absolutely necessary."
I nodded, and as the two men attempted to flank me, I drew my Ehrenfeld 9mm pistol and quickly fired two rounds into the left leg of the woman carrying the ball peen hammer. The first round exploded through the knee cap, while the second struck the ankle and shattered what looked like her talus and tibia. Without pausing, I turned and fired two rounds into the right bicep and shoulder of one of the men with the sledgehammers. From the way the arm went limp, the hammer dropping to the floor, I guessed that I had struck the scapula near where the bone connected the arm. The other man began to roar in slow motion outrage as I rode the adrenal response back towards him. I fired two rounds into his left quadricep muscles as he brought his weight down onto the leg. The leg wobbled bizarrely and twisted horribly as the man fell to the ground.
I spun back to train the pistol on the two standing woman, who froze as I brought the gun back around, "Two rounds left ladies. I can reload and fire this pistol accurately at this range in less than two seconds flat. Either lay down the guns, or decide who's getting shot first."
They looked at each other, and then set their weapons slowly on the ground. I ejected the magazine and reloaded with a new one, before holstering my pistol and putting the nearly spent magazine into the magazine pouch on the holster. "I struck several bones, the damage is severe. They may even need transfusions. Fortunately, it seems as though you're close to a good supply. Stay out of our way."
We left them tending to each other and made our way back to the office, only to find Rudy waiting for us.
"Where have you guys been?" Rudy asked as we approached, "I've got big news, and my kin are keeping me waiting."
"What have you discovered?"
"Saw that lady with the red tattoo again. She was talking with the guy in a burgundy suit. Looked chinese, but when I tracked him down- because I am that good- found out he's an Indonesian immigrant. He's of Chinese descent, but born and raised in Indonesia. got here less than legally, but everything I could find out about him told me he's an above board kind of guy."
"Except for the fact that you saw him with our suspect," Harbinger said.
"Yeah, that's it exactly. Thing I noticed though is that he never looks like he's happy about what he's doing. She's got a kind of 'look how scary I am' vibe she pulls off. He's got a vibe that says 'I wish I were anywhere but here', and so I get the feeling that burgundy boy may not be too different from me in the Bannerlands, you know? A serf on the manor, bonded to a lord?"
"But you've seen him frequently?"
"Oh yeah. There's the red tattoo lady too. She shows up when the poor suckers first herded in. But this other guy in his fancy suit with his burgundy pinstripes and fancy hair, he shows up at the end with papers; none of my contacts could get a look, but the way he uses the list makes us think the list is a roster list for the people coming in. This guy looks like he's some logistics expert, some facilitator or something. So he isn't in charge, but he's got some pull."
Rudy produced a series of photos, "That's the guy." He said pointing.
"We just saw him transporting people," I said.
"Then I suspect that we need to speak with him."
"Well, he doesn't seem to have an office. I looked. He's kind of like old Al Capone; dressed like he has money, but no legal means of acquriing it. But at least I got a name: Hanjaya. He's an Indonesian businessman, lived in New Jericho a long time. He's married to some academic. This guy seems like he's their numbers man. You shake this guy and I'll bet you get a name."
I pressed my lips together, "do you have a name on fancy suit guy's husband?" I asked.
Rudy clicked his tongue, "yeah. What was it again? Jang? Wang? No, it was Zhang I'm pretty sure."
"Is anyone not lying to us? I asked.
"People lie," harbinger said, " people lie to protect their interests. It doesn't make everyone a villain."
"I'm not talking everyone. Just the people lying too us about their involvement in human trafficking."
"We may need to ask Mr. Zhang to introduce us to his husband." Harbinger said.
"I can do better. I can show you where he's at right now. Or at least where he should be if my intel is good."
"I'm going to be late," I said.
"You can go," Harbinger said, "No hard feelings."
I clenched my jaw, and then shook my head, "If I'm going to act as your partner, I need to act like you partner. Duty before diversion."
"What's she talking about?" Rudy asked.
"She has a date."
"You're going to stand her up?" Rudy asked.
"I'm going to perform the duties of job that father arranged for me to perform."
"Rock solid. Stone cold." Rudy said, "You're like old Lord Byron, 'I slept and dreamt that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty.' That is some master class stoicism there."
"It's going to ruin my attempts to maintain a love life," I said, "Let's go. That was I can pretend to myself that I might still make it in time."
Rudy led us back into the Ring, much further into the fractal mass of shanties built upon shacks built upon ruined houses. The smell became intolerable and I found myself longing for a cigarette. The Ring embodied the struggles Olam had battled, frequently in vain, since the fall.
People wore rags in the Ring, even if they owned better clothing. They didn't bath and frequently wiped mud on their faces to make their appearance more pathetic. The average resident of the Ring knew that looking even a little prosperous made one a target for the rampant low level street crime that plagued the ring. People in the Ring sometimes managed to acquire luxury goods, such as crank radios, or small solar panels, or televisions. But the owners of such goods hid or disguised them very carefully. Looking poor kept one from becoming poorer still in the Ring.
Without reliable fossil fuel sources maintaining an industrial scale electrical grid had become a dream, attainable by only those regions with extractable coal reserves. New Jericho had never stood among those lucky regions. Instead, burning wood had accelerated deforestation and thus erosion, and led people to burning dried dung for fuel. A wise resident of the ring learned not to ask what kind of dried dung one had purchased. Typhus and Typhoid and Cholera had become fast friends of the Ring dwellers, practically laying seige to Sticktown- to every major city really, as shanty towns like the Ring were nearly universal. Sanitary conditions did not meet anybody's standards of acceptability. The river stank like an open toilet for the simple reason that the residents of the Ring used the river as a toilet, and a bath, and a kitchen sink, and a source of drinking water.
Harbinger, looked at me, "I don't suppose, you'd allow me to light up to drive away this stench?"
I shook my head, "That would be worse. I thought your sense of smell was dead?"
"Apparently it is merely senile, and only roused by the strongest inputs."
Rudy grinned, "I got some smokes. Navy Boys cause they're cheap and don't smell as bad as Gemsboks. That work for you two dainty flowers?"
"I will take both the cigarette and the insult." I said as Rudy passed out the tubes of tobacco wrapped in lemongrass, and then passed around a box of stick matches.
Rudy was right about Navy Boys smelling better than the ultra cheap cigarettes that Gemsbok sold, owing to the lemongrass wrapping. The smoke did indeed ease the smell of human waste and body odor, although the effect was a masking rather than a cleansing effect. The sense was of riding a lemongrass and tobacco skiff across a river of human excrement.
Deeper into the ring than I had ever gone before, through winding serpentine alleyways of corrugated tin and scavenged wood and plastic tarpaulin, we arrived at a familiar sight.
"This is a Blood Market. We've been to one before." I said.
"You've been to a blood market. This is the blood market. This is the original. Call it head office."
Rudy was right. Before us stood a much larger version of the small blood market we had been too previously. I saw the refrigeration immediately. banks and banks of homemade freezers stood within the vast covered market. The freezers had been hooked up to a huge collection of batteries and generators with wires snaking out to a huge phalanx of stationary bicycles, upon which people pedaled.
"Are those people cycling to power the freezers?" I asked.
Rudy nodded, "Most of them are paying for surgery, their surgery or somebody else's."
"Most?"
"The kids aren't as lucky." Rudy said, pointing to the back rows of the bicycles. The children looked very malnourished, and exhausted.
I could feel muscles in my jaw tightening, "What's the deal with the children?"
"People who can't take care of their children here in the Ring might sell them into service, here or somewhere else. An illegal textiles operation to make fancy shirts for pretty ladies. All sorts of nasty jobs to make rich people feel pampered."
"We need to shut this down." Harbinger said.
"And how are poor folk going to get surgery? Vaccination? Blood transfusions? You got a better way?" Rudy said.
"No immediately," Harbinger said, "But there has to be one."
"There isn't," Rudy said, "They tried that before the fall, remember? They mortgaged the future using coal and gas and oil, and they gave everyone a house with running water and heat and televisions and computers and phones that could talk around the world. People didn't have to work before the Fall, but look where it got us. The world doesn't work that way. people suffer because that's what works. Paradise doesn't work man, paradise kills."
Harbinger didn't answer.
"So yeah," Rudy said, "Thing about the suicide victims and the human smuggling thing, is that they are definitely related in some way. I don't get it, but it's there. My people are telling me about groups of folks coming in on the down low from places like Malaysia and Indonesia all that. They show in groups of five to ten, and when they get processed, they come to the Ring and settle down, one person less than they had when they first showed up at the market. A little digging around and we found out that a few of the missing folks get found, or their bodies do. Dumped in the ring, the bodies look like your suicides. They have that same gunshot wound to the head, like they did the job themselves, and then they're missing organs or eyes or other bits. People don't like to talk about it,a nd the sheriff doesn't send deputies into the Ring unless she's got no other choice. So it just disappears. So you see the big metal desk over by the biycles?"
He pointed to a huge metal army surplus desk positioned between us and the stationary bicycles. The desk stood surrounded by metal filing cabinets. Harbinger nodded to Rudy, after a moment, I nodded as well. Three men stood around the makeshift office dressed in rags but built fair to muscularly to be simply homeless people.
"That's where Zhang's husband does his business when he's here."
"So now what?" I asked.
"Now we wait."
And so we waited. We wandered about the market, moving in and out of the the market itself. Time passed and the man didn't show up. Time passed and passed, and I looked at my pocket watch with increasing frequency. I was running out of time. Finally, it became clear that the the man had no intention of showing up for us today.
We decided to call it a day. Harbinger gave Rudy three jobs as we parted ways. He was to talk to poor people who were recently and unexpectedly able to afford expensive medical treatWe walked out to the edge of town, where Sticktown collapsed into the Ring to investigate the scene of the altercation that Buster Brand told us about in our interrogation. As we approached the greasy point on the map that Buster Brand had indicated, we noticed something draped over a street sign next to an otherwise unremarkable alley. Somebody had hung a piece of cotton cloth, a discarded shirt from the looks of it, over the street sign. A red circle with an X had been drawn on the cloth by an unknown would be artist in a shaky hand.
"What is this place?" I asked, but I suspected I already knew.
"This looks like one of Rudy's aforementioned blood markets." Harbinger answered, confirming my suspicion.
Nestled in the crowded alley way, a line of cloth roofed stalls had sprung up. I could see people with intravenous plastic tubes attached to their arms, and realized that they were giving blood. Ice filled coolers loaded with bags of the collected blood stood piled wherever ever room would allow.
I pointed and Harbinger said, "How are they refrigerating the blood over the long term? That much refrigeration would be expensive."
"That much blood will be worth a lot of sticks and stones," I said, "They can probably afford refrigeration."
"But where would they get it without arousing suspicion?" Harbinger said.
"Is that cigarette ash?" I asked pointed at the ground.
Harbinger nodded, "Our boy Mr. Hus smoked 108s did he not? And Mr. Brand smoked Gemsboks, if I recall. Can you give that mess a sniff and see if it smells like somebody smoked Buddhist incense there?"
"Why make your assistant do that?" I asked, "Seems a little menial."
"Oh no, not at all. I just don't have a great sense of smell after years of using pipeweed as an astral projection aid."
"So this is less tease the new guy and more a lesson on the cost of smoking?" I asked with a smile.
"Something like that, now what does that ash smell like?"
I bent down and gave the pile of ash a sniff, "It doesn't smell like much. I think the ash has sat here a little while. But I can still get a whiff of incense, so I think it is ash from a 108."
"That suggests that this is the right place."
"This isn't the place. This is the starting line," I corrected, "Now we have to find the trail."
"Tracking isn't really my forte," Harbinger said, "I tend to use my Spirit Band to find people. Rudy and his Ghost boys are quite good at digging stuff up. That's one of the things that made your father's offer quite attractive. He was always a great tracker, he once tracked Perry Mueller- this unpleasant bully from our youth- halfway across town and straight through the ring. And when we found him, well let's just say that your father is a better scrapper than the two of us put together. Hmm, I'm digressing. In either case, I've always known your father was an excellent tracker, well not always but for quite some time, and he indicated that you were an excellent pupil."
"I am all a goggle. That was a whole lot of talking to ask me to track this kid Buster Brand lost. You realize we don't even know for certain that this is connected."
"In the shadowlands, everything is connected. Stories don't like extraneous details."
"We aren't living in a story Harbinger."
"Everyone lives in a story. I just co-author mine."
At the end of the alleyway I noticed a group of Chinese people, all dressed in worn out ill fitting clothes, lined up to give blood. A Chinese gentleman stood beside them, dressed smartly in a fitted burgundy pinstripe bespoke suit with a solid black tie and a gold tie pin. He looked towards us as I watched, and took a drag on a Jakarta black cigarette and blew a few casual smoke rings. He wore his hair in a trendy pompadour haircut with sideburns that reached down the edges of his chin. He seemed to me to be watching over them.
"That looks like a connection to our human smuggling ring," Harbinger said, noticing the group at nearly the same time as I did.
Something caught my eye, movement in the crowd that didn't match the ebb and flow of the crowd. Somebody was moving towards us, and trying to keep out of sight as they did it.
"We're being hunted," I said to Harbinger," They aren't nearly as stealthy as they think they are, but they aren't bad. Which means we'll probably have to fight. Which means I'm going to be late for my date. And she really was quite."
"I'm sure she'll understand."
"The cute ones don't have to understand. They have other people waiting in line."
"Shall we confront them?" Harbinger asked.
"Here? On their turf, with this many people who may be sympathetic to them instead of us? No, definitely not. Besides a fight here is goignt o ruin any tracks."
"Do you have another suggestion?"
"From how they're acting, they want to isolate us. I say we let them. I'll try and track the kid that Buster Brand lost. It's probably unrelated to our cases, but a lost child is still a lost child. And that will, if I can get a good track, lead us away. With any luck I'll be able to pick a point to trigger their ambush in a way the gives advantage back to us."
"Sounds good in theory. How confident are you on you ability to pull it off."
"Well, let's see. I have to find old tracks in a high traffic area. Follow said tracks, but still control the terrain and path to prevent a group of killers from ambushing us before we're ready. Find a suitable coutner abush point along the path without showing my hand to our pursuers. And do this all before I'm late for my date."
"So?"
"It will all go horribly wrong," I said, "But I may be able to control the wrong and aim at it them. I don't have any better options. You?"
"None. And your ideas sound exciting. Let's proceed."
I looked at the ash and tried to ignore the incongruous movements at the corner of vision, as the figures shadowing us moved and watched. There was scattered ash and footprints everywhere. The area showed evidence of being a high traffic area. I rolled my eyes at my own observation. I was standing in an illegal market thronging with people, of course the area was high traffic. What I needed was an area where a child would travel, but an adult wouldn't; an area that was also conducive to capturing tracks, but sheltered from forces that would wear the track away.
I can see Harbinger trying to look where I am looking. He shook his head, " This is hopeless. Look at all the tracks. You aren't going to find anything."
I ignored him for moment and scanned the area with a soft gaze, not focusing on anything, looking instead for something that matched what I needed. Then I saw my target area. A low fence built from tubular metal bars that rose roughly four feet above the ground with wide spaces between riser beams. A child could easily dart under or through, but an adult would have to climb over in awkward fashion. Were I a child trying to escape a large adult chasing me, I would run under that metal fence.
I approached the fence and scanned the packed dry mud and sand until I found what I had hoped to find, a small clear shoe print, with pressure releases deformation consistent with a child running at full speed. The heel was raised slightly and the shape and lack of tread design made me think that the shoe was classic Mary Jane style shoe.
"I have a direction and a gender," I said aloud.
"Really?" Harbinger said in surprise, "Explain please."
I pointed to the fence, "Small child in mary janes with a slight heel went running under that fence at full tilt. I don't see any other children around here. And if I were fleeing from an adult, that's the obstacle I'd choose. So unless the child in question has a mother has been trying to make her son look like a pretty little flower, our target is a little girl in impractical shoes for running. She won't have gone far in those shoes. I have worn them, for familiy photos. They break if try to leap over dry creek beds. They break if you try to climb trees. They break if you kick your unpleasant cousin Audrey. They break and they break and they break, and eventually people stop putting you in them and start buying you sturdy riding boots."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Purely hypothetical." I answered, "Our hunters are getting antsy. Let's start moving before they decide to ambush in a crowd."
"Lead the way."
The trail had been very nearly obliterated by the constant traffic of the Ring and the Blood Market. I followed the scattered scraps of track and sign by looking up from the most recent track and scanning round for the best place for a little girl to escape a large and slightly clumsy man. I then moved to that area and looked for any sign that might confirm my suspicion. If I found nothing, I returned to the last sign and tried again. In this way, Harbinger and I walked forward and backwards slowly out of the Ring and back towards Sticktown and more particularly back towards the neighbourhood where Victoria lived. As we closed on the transition out from the Ring and back into Sticktown itself, our pursuers pulled back. I hadn't got a clean look at them, but they moved pretty well. They pulled back and I lost them for a moment, and then spotted the tell tale movement of people moving out of sync with the crowd and the moved around and past us.
"Our hunters don't want us getting back into town, they don't want us getting where the law might intervene." I said, "They don't want any witnesses who might might talk to the police. I think they might actually want to kill us."
"And this is precisely why your father thought that you would be useful to my practice."
"They're ahead of us," I said, "Do you want to try and change direction, or take them straight on?"
"Do you want to try and evade a group of thugs inside the Ring?" he asked.
"These guys are better than regular thugs, gang equivalent of Special Forces I imagine," I added.
"Can you manage them?" He asked.
"In theory? Yes, that the plan," I said, "But no plan survives contact with the enemy. You never know what your opponent knows with certainty, and you never know what else is going to arrive to ruin everyone's plans."
Our pursuers did not hide as we approached. Five figures, all of Asian descent; two men and three woman dressed in leather riding jackets with red cloth bands tied around their right biceps. All five were carrying bludgeons of some sort, one held a baseball bat, another a billy club, another a ball peen hammer, The other two both carried sledgehammers.
The two with the sledge hammers barred the way through with out stretched arms and crossed hammers. The woman with the ball peen hammer stood behind them and addressed us, "You can tell Perun has his cronies that our Lady has refused his demands. He is not in control of Sticktown, Nobody challenges the Red Flag Fleet and lives!"
Harbinger spread his arms wide and lowed his head, "Do we look like Peruns lackeys? Where are our horribly tacky Nordic tattoos? Do we have that trademark glassy eyed and slack jawed expression that suggests Perun initiates his boys with a kick to the testicles and sharp blow the pre-frontal cortex?"
"We saw you snooping about. Who else would you be if not the upstarts of Perun? He has tried too many times to enforce his bravado upon the Fleet and we will not accept it. We will not bow to you."
"You don't have to bow to us," Harbinger continued, "We are with Perun. We aren't with anybody. You can just let us go, it's not a problem."
"He may be telling the truth," The woman with the bat said, "They look nothing like Perun's idiots."
"Then they are something worse, spies or new rivals or police." The hammer woman answered, "Kill them!"
The two men with the sledge hammers stepped forward moving to either side of us.
"And here we go." I muttered, making a quick assessment of their positions, "Do we care if they die?" I asked Harbinger.
"We're close enough to the town line that they might be found if we didn't hide the bodies. And I'd prefer not to kill unless it's absolutely necessary."
I nodded, and as the two men attempted to flank me, I drew my Ehrenfeld 9mm pistol and quickly fired two rounds into the left leg of the woman carrying the ball peen hammer. The first round exploded through the knee cap, while the second struck the ankle and shattered what looked like her talus and tibia. Without pausing, I turned and fired two rounds into the right bicep and shoulder of one of the men with the sledgehammers. From the way the arm went limp, the hammer dropping to the floor, I guessed that I had struck the scapula near where the bone connected the arm. The other man began to roar in slow motion outrage as I rode the adrenal response back towards him. I fired two rounds into his left quadricep muscles as he brought his weight down onto the leg. The leg wobbled bizarrely and twisted horribly as the man fell to the ground.
I spun back to train the pistol on the two standing woman, who froze as I brought the gun back around, "Two rounds left ladies. I can reload and fire this pistol accurately at this range in less than two seconds flat. Either lay down the guns, or decide who's getting shot first."
They looked at each other, and then set their weapons slowly on the ground. I ejected the magazine and reloaded with a new one, before holstering my pistol and putting the nearly spent magazine into the magazine pouch on the holster. "I struck several bones, the damage is severe. They may even need transfusions. Fortunately, it seems as though you're close to a good supply. Stay out of our way."
We left them tending to each other and made our way back to the office, only to find Rudy waiting for us.
"Where have you guys been?" Rudy asked as we approached, "I've got big news, and my kin are keeping me waiting."
"What have you discovered?"
"Saw that lady with the red tattoo again. She was talking with the guy in a burgundy suit. Looked chinese, but when I tracked him down- because I am that good- found out he's an Indonesian immigrant. He's of Chinese descent, but born and raised in Indonesia. got here less than legally, but everything I could find out about him told me he's an above board kind of guy."
"Except for the fact that you saw him with our suspect," Harbinger said.
"Yeah, that's it exactly. Thing I noticed though is that he never looks like he's happy about what he's doing. She's got a kind of 'look how scary I am' vibe she pulls off. He's got a vibe that says 'I wish I were anywhere but here', and so I get the feeling that burgundy boy may not be too different from me in the Bannerlands, you know? A serf on the manor, bonded to a lord?"
"But you've seen him frequently?"
"Oh yeah. There's the red tattoo lady too. She shows up when the poor suckers first herded in. But this other guy in his fancy suit with his burgundy pinstripes and fancy hair, he shows up at the end with papers; none of my contacts could get a look, but the way he uses the list makes us think the list is a roster list for the people coming in. This guy looks like he's some logistics expert, some facilitator or something. So he isn't in charge, but he's got some pull."
Rudy produced a series of photos, "That's the guy." He said pointing.
"We just saw him transporting people," I said.
"Then I suspect that we need to speak with him."
"Well, he doesn't seem to have an office. I looked. He's kind of like old Al Capone; dressed like he has money, but no legal means of acquriing it. But at least I got a name: Hanjaya. He's an Indonesian businessman, lived in New Jericho a long time. He's married to some academic. This guy seems like he's their numbers man. You shake this guy and I'll bet you get a name."
I pressed my lips together, "do you have a name on fancy suit guy's husband?" I asked.
Rudy clicked his tongue, "yeah. What was it again? Jang? Wang? No, it was Zhang I'm pretty sure."
"Is anyone not lying to us? I asked.
"People lie," harbinger said, " people lie to protect their interests. It doesn't make everyone a villain."
"I'm not talking everyone. Just the people lying too us about their involvement in human trafficking."
"We may need to ask Mr. Zhang to introduce us to his husband." Harbinger said.
"I can do better. I can show you where he's at right now. Or at least where he should be if my intel is good."
"I'm going to be late," I said.
"You can go," Harbinger said, "No hard feelings."
I clenched my jaw, and then shook my head, "If I'm going to act as your partner, I need to act like you partner. Duty before diversion."
"What's she talking about?" Rudy asked.
"She has a date."
"You're going to stand her up?" Rudy asked.
"I'm going to perform the duties of job that father arranged for me to perform."
"Rock solid. Stone cold." Rudy said, "You're like old Lord Byron, 'I slept and dreamt that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty.' That is some master class stoicism there."
"It's going to ruin my attempts to maintain a love life," I said, "Let's go. That was I can pretend to myself that I might still make it in time."
Rudy led us back into the Ring, much further into the fractal mass of shanties built upon shacks built upon ruined houses. The smell became intolerable and I found myself longing for a cigarette. The Ring embodied the struggles Olam had battled, frequently in vain, since the fall.
People wore rags in the Ring, even if they owned better clothing. They didn't bath and frequently wiped mud on their faces to make their appearance more pathetic. The average resident of the Ring knew that looking even a little prosperous made one a target for the rampant low level street crime that plagued the ring. People in the Ring sometimes managed to acquire luxury goods, such as crank radios, or small solar panels, or televisions. But the owners of such goods hid or disguised them very carefully. Looking poor kept one from becoming poorer still in the Ring.
Without reliable fossil fuel sources maintaining an industrial scale electrical grid had become a dream, attainable by only those regions with extractable coal reserves. New Jericho had never stood among those lucky regions. Instead, burning wood had accelerated deforestation and thus erosion, and led people to burning dried dung for fuel. A wise resident of the ring learned not to ask what kind of dried dung one had purchased. Typhus and Typhoid and Cholera had become fast friends of the Ring dwellers, practically laying seige to Sticktown- to every major city really, as shanty towns like the Ring were nearly universal. Sanitary conditions did not meet anybody's standards of acceptability. The river stank like an open toilet for the simple reason that the residents of the Ring used the river as a toilet, and a bath, and a kitchen sink, and a source of drinking water.
Harbinger, looked at me, "I don't suppose, you'd allow me to light up to drive away this stench?"
I shook my head, "That would be worse. I thought your sense of smell was dead?"
"Apparently it is merely senile, and only roused by the strongest inputs."
Rudy grinned, "I got some smokes. Navy Boys cause they're cheap and don't smell as bad as Gemsboks. That work for you two dainty flowers?"
"I will take both the cigarette and the insult." I said as Rudy passed out the tubes of tobacco wrapped in lemongrass, and then passed around a box of stick matches.
Rudy was right about Navy Boys smelling better than the ultra cheap cigarettes that Gemsbok sold, owing to the lemongrass wrapping. The smoke did indeed ease the smell of human waste and body odor, although the effect was a masking rather than a cleansing effect. The sense was of riding a lemongrass and tobacco skiff across a river of human excrement.
Deeper into the ring than I had ever gone before, through winding serpentine alleyways of corrugated tin and scavenged wood and plastic tarpaulin, we arrived at a familiar sight.
"This is a Blood Market. We've been to one before." I said.
"You've been to a blood market. This is the blood market. This is the original. Call it head office."
Rudy was right. Before us stood a much larger version of the small blood market we had been too previously. I saw the refrigeration immediately. banks and banks of homemade freezers stood within the vast covered market. The freezers had been hooked up to a huge collection of batteries and generators with wires snaking out to a huge phalanx of stationary bicycles, upon which people pedaled.
"Are those people cycling to power the freezers?" I asked.
Rudy nodded, "Most of them are paying for surgery, their surgery or somebody else's."
"Most?"
"The kids aren't as lucky." Rudy said, pointing to the back rows of the bicycles. The children looked very malnourished, and exhausted.
I could feel muscles in my jaw tightening, "What's the deal with the children?"
"People who can't take care of their children here in the Ring might sell them into service, here or somewhere else. An illegal textiles operation to make fancy shirts for pretty ladies. All sorts of nasty jobs to make rich people feel pampered."
"We need to shut this down." Harbinger said.
"And how are poor folk going to get surgery? Vaccination? Blood transfusions? You got a better way?" Rudy said.
"No immediately," Harbinger said, "But there has to be one."
"There isn't," Rudy said, "They tried that before the fall, remember? They mortgaged the future using coal and gas and oil, and they gave everyone a house with running water and heat and televisions and computers and phones that could talk around the world. People didn't have to work before the Fall, but look where it got us. The world doesn't work that way. people suffer because that's what works. Paradise doesn't work man, paradise kills."
Harbinger didn't answer.
"So yeah," Rudy said, "Thing about the suicide victims and the human smuggling thing, is that they are definitely related in some way. I don't get it, but it's there. My people are telling me about groups of folks coming in on the down low from places like Malaysia and Indonesia all that. They show in groups of five to ten, and when they get processed, they come to the Ring and settle down, one person less than they had when they first showed up at the market. A little digging around and we found out that a few of the missing folks get found, or their bodies do. Dumped in the ring, the bodies look like your suicides. They have that same gunshot wound to the head, like they did the job themselves, and then they're missing organs or eyes or other bits. People don't like to talk about it,a nd the sheriff doesn't send deputies into the Ring unless she's got no other choice. So it just disappears. So you see the big metal desk over by the biycles?"
He pointed to a huge metal army surplus desk positioned between us and the stationary bicycles. The desk stood surrounded by metal filing cabinets. Harbinger nodded to Rudy, after a moment, I nodded as well. Three men stood around the makeshift office dressed in rags but built fair to muscularly to be simply homeless people.
"That's where Zhang's husband does his business when he's here."
"So now what?" I asked.
"Now we wait."
And so we waited. We wandered about the market, moving in and out of the the market itself. Time passed and the man didn't show up. Time passed and passed, and I looked at my pocket watch with increasing frequency. I was running out of time. Finally, it became clear that the the man had no intention of showing up for us today.
We decided to call it a day. Harbinger gave Rudy three jobs as we parted ways. He was to talk to poor people who were recently and unexpectedly able to afford expensive medical treatments, try to get information from them about how they managed to pay for their treatment. He also instructed Rudy to shadow Zhang Wei's husband and try to find out what else he could. And he was to continue collecting photographs of anyone related who seemed suspicious. Photographs were damning evidence even if they showed nothing.
After we had parted ways with Rudy, Harbinger said to me, "We saw the man already. We know he's involved in this. Maybe we can use that to extract some information from Dr. Zhang Wei. If you have time that is."
I looked at my watch. I had three quarters of an hour, my chances of making my date with Victoria. I considered the problem, and dismissed the whole thing as problem at all. I had agreed to work with Harbinger. That made this my duty. I would live with the consequences of that decision, as I lived with the consequences of all my decisions.
ments, try to get information from them about how they managed to pay for their treatment. He also instructed Rudy to shadow Zhang Wei's husband and try to find out what else he could. And he was to continue collecting photographs of anyone related who seemed suspicious. Photographs were damning evidence even if they showed nothing.
After we had parted ways with Rudy, Harbinger said to me, "We saw the man already. We know he's involved in this. Maybe we can use that to extract some information from Dr. Zhang Wei. If you have time that is."
I looked at my watch. I had three quarters of an hour, my chances of making my date with Victoria. I considered the problem, and dismissed the whole thing as problem at all. I had agreed to work with Harbinger. That made this my duty. I would live with the consequences of that decision, as I lived with the consequences of all my decisions.
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