Titan's Day

by Dan Stout

“You couldn’t just pick up the phone?” I asked. “Did you really need to drag us down in front of your friends?”

  Donnie’s brow furrowed. He looked in the direction of the door, and the pool of celebrants, then back at me. “Oh! You mean the twins?” His grin was as wide and calm as the ice plains. “I make lots of investments. Hard to keep track sometimes.”

  Micah nodded. “We’re believers in spreading our bets.”

  It was a reasonable stance from investors in criminal enterprises.

  She huffed out a chuckle. “The other day an old acquaintance contacted me, from out of the blue. Made an offer to sell us a personal product—” She cut herself off, eyelids drooping, though with enough clarity in her voice that I wondered if the inebriation had been an act. “Nothing illegal,” she said. She bit her lip, clearly avoiding looking in Donnie’s direction. “Purely cosmetic.”

  “I had an accident,” Donnie said with a shrug. “People think it’d bother me. It doesn’t.”

  “If you need that for satisfaction, then it shows a lack of imagination.” Purring, Micah gave him a playful pinch on the ear.

  He patted her hand, then turned to Dungan. “Have a seat and let’s talk, Detective. Micah will see your friends out.”

  Micah, Jax, and I followed Biggs, leaving Dungan and Donnie alone in the isolation of the living room. As we reached the door, Micah gestured with her straw, and the bodyguard backed off a few paces. The sorcerer leaned toward us, the smell of rum and cola heavy on her breath.

  “You oughta come back sometime when there’s more people. You’d be surprised how much fun this place is.”

  “We’re busy serving the public,” I said. “Saving lives, locking up people like you.”

  She suppressed a laugh, and the tip of her tongue stuck out between her teeth, looking like Rumple when I surprised him mid-groom. “Oh, sugar, you have no idea! You’re going to get so many requests for your time. You’re the hot new thing.”

  Micah glided away across the carpet, wheels on her skates squeaking as she left us to stare at each other. We passed through the front doors, hands skimming the entry vent as we recited the traditional prayer of thanks. Even a place like Donnie’s mansion was an oasis of warmth from the ice plains, a gift from the Titan who suffered far below.

  10

  FROM DONNIE’S WE DROVE FOR miles, doing lazy loops along the city’s meandering streets. Ajax was behind the wheel, trying to follow my directions as he snaked us through traffic. He stared intently at the road and muttered to himself at intersections.

  “Still learning the city map?” I said.

  On Titanshade’s fringes the streets were tidy grids and the buildings stood taller, able to sink footers into the ground without fear of disturbing the geo-vents. But closer to the Mount the neighborhoods grew organically, to match the natural layout of the vent openings. As a result, the streets of the inner city swerved and curved, narrowed and widened, carried traffic in broad loops or abrupt dead ends. It was notoriously confusing for anyone who didn’t grow up on its streets.

  He nodded his answer, keeping his concentration on the street. I grunted in approval.

  “Know the city and you’ll know the victim,” I said. “Know the victim—”

  “Know the killer,” he finished for me, then took a deep breath. “Is this really what you want to talk about? After wasting a full day sitting in a gangster’s living room so we can placate your pal Dungan?”

  “Don’t let that BS get you distracted,” I said.

  “From what? The one open case we’ve got right now? We’d normally have what, fifteen?” He clacked his biting jaws together. “Now stop talking. I want to see if this is Tengly Avenue up ahead.”

  He resumed scanning the road, hunting for the next street sign. A scooter shot past us, coming within a hands-breadth of my side mirror. I drummed my fingers on the dash and tried to dial in a radio station worth a damn as we moved farther from the Mount. Finally settling on a station with a commercial, I stared out the window. We passed a storefront with newly hung decorations. Silver and blue bunting in the shape of the ba, a sideways figure eight that symbolized the eternal winding path we all walked along. I decided to try another change of subject.

  I jerked a thumb, indicating the bustle in the street. “Did you celebrate Titan’s Day as a kid?”

  Jax stared at the decorations and sighed. “No,” he said. “It was on the calendar, but we didn’t celebrate it.”

  That wasn’t surprising. The celebration of the Titan’s sacrifice for our city didn’t spread far beyond Titanshade’s borders.

  “So this is your first Titan’s Day?”

  “You don’t need to explain it,” said Ajax, his words underscored by a series of annoyed clicks. “Maybe I don’t quite get all the customs.”

  I grunted, taking advantage of the slowing traffic to get a better glimpse of the decorations along the street. Even out here, where drunks and candies manned the streets, the spirit of the season was on display. Or at least its trappings.

  When we reached the intersection, he pointed in triumph at the white-on-green of the street sign. Tengly Avenue.

  I grinned. “Keep it up and pretty soon you’ll be a real cop.” I indicated the street. “Keep going straight a little ways, till we get to Patterson Avenue.” I looked back at the holiday activity on the storefronts and sidewalks. “It’s a lot more commercial these days,” I said. “The point of the thing is lost in all the decorations and sales.”

  “And what is that point?”

  “Oh, are you saying I do need to explain the holiday?” He started to protest, and I talked over him. “Self-sacrifice, that’s the point. The Titan gave the city heat, even though it meant an eternity of torture.” I craned my head. A group of costumed revelers had turned the corner, leaping and leering, teasing passersby.

  “Slow down.” I covered a belch with my sleeve as I pointed. “I want a better view of the imps.”

  The costumes varied from reveler to reveler, but all of them represented the creatures said to torment the Titan far below ground. Some appeared lizard-skinned and reptilian, others were human caricatures. As traffic came to a halt, I pointed out a group of worm-bodied things, faces obscured by masks of blue nylon.

  “Those are based on some demon from old Mollenkampi folktales,” I said.

  Jax gave me a side-eye, one mandible twitching, its hooked end dragging along the length of a jutting tooth. “That much I knew already.”

  “I guess that figures,” I said. “What’re they called? The demons, I mean.”

  He told me. It was a word far beyond my ability to replicate, three syllables that sounded like wind howling through the eaves of an abandoned building.

  But frightening costumes were in the minority. Most were played for laughs, hairy-suited figures with dangling false tongues and red spiraled horns ending in sharp, white-tipped points. Kids’ stuff.

  Still idling in traffic, Jax asked, “What are we looking for down here, anyway?”

  I turned in my seat, still observing the costumed revelers. “They usually don’t show up until closer to the actual day,” I said. “But this year Imp’s Run started early.” The rediscovery of manna and the tension of the military presence had manifested itself in a burst of rebellion. Combine that with rising rents and growing unemployment, and maybe we all needed a little Hells-raising. Whatever the reason, this year the imps were on the street a full nine days before the holiday.

  Jax sighed. “Or you could ignore my question.” He tracked the troublemakers through the rearview. “So they do pranks?”

  “Gambols,” I said. “When they’re in costume for Imp’s Run, it’s called a gambol.”

  Traffic flowed again, and we pulled away. It wasn’t unusual to see humped, hairy backs disappearing into alleyways or even tall stilt walkers hurl balloons filled with water (or some
other, less appealing liquid) across a busy street, dodging away before enraged pedestrians could catch up with them. Traditionally such stunts were treated with a slap on the wrist, so long as the prankster wore a decent imp suit and the prank wasn’t particularly harmful. But this year tensions were high, and I suspected the holding cells back at the Bunker were destined to be brimming with hungover revelers in costume.

  “Shouldn’t let them get away with it,” he said. “Like broken windows.”

  “Come again?”

  “Say a couple apartments go vacant. Kids throw rocks, bust out a couple windows. No big deal, right?” He shook his head. “The windows don’t get fixed, the kids don’t get punished. So they break a few more. Someone else sees that, realizes the place is vacant and they tear out the wiring and plumbing for scrap metal. Squatters move in, maybe turn it into a chono den or angel’s roost. And it started with broken windows.”

  I frowned. “It wasn’t broken windows that got Jane killed.”

  The station I’d selected blared out yet another commercial, and Jax jabbed one of the preset buttons on the radio. “Your taste in music gets worse every day.” He took his eyes off the road long enough to look me over. “Why are you so focused on this one case?”

  “Because it’s our first job back,” I said. “Because Dungan might take it away, and no one will give a damn about finding who killed her.” Ajax sped up to let a bakery truck slide in behind us, and I kept talking. “There’s a million reasons to care. How can you not care that someone bashed in this girl’s head and left her to die in the filth of an alley?” I noticed Jax’s shoulders tighten, but he didn’t interrupt me.

  On the sidewalk, I spotted the person I’d been hoping to find. “Pull over,” I said.

  Jax swerved tight to the curb in a fire lane and threw the car into park. He leaned back and gave me his full attention.

  “I never said I don’t care.” The menacing tusks of his biting jaw opened wider, adding an angry, bass undertone to his words. “I’ve buried relatives who looked like her. Who died like her. And if your pal Dungan is working on some plan to cut that cycle of violence at the source?” He spread his hands wide, bemused, as if I were a puzzle he couldn’t get his head around. “Why the Hells would you not want to take it?”

  “Whatever Dungan’s up to, it isn’t going to get justice for Jane,” I said. “For this one, real, non-hypothetical person.”

  “And what about the others?” he said. “What about the next one and the one after that? You can’t obsess over all of them, Carter.”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t. But maybe I can make a difference in one. So that’s what I’m gonna do.”

  On the sidewalk our contact turned, stared at us, and propped a hand on one hip, brows furrowed. Talena Michaels never looked happy to see the man who’d helped raise her.

  * * *

  Dressed in layers, Talena showed a bit of holiday flair with blue-and-silver T-shirts under a pair of flannel button-ups, shirttails hanging over worn blue jeans. An ideal outfit for moving from one neighborhood’s microclimate to another. She’d been talking to a trio of youths when we pulled up, all of them dressed as pragmatically as Talena. Most of them wore knit hats, though Talena was bare-headed, her hair pulled back against her neck. I expected the others to disappear as we approached, a typical response to two men dressed in the kind of low-end suits that a cop’s salary could supply. Instead they eyed us with curiosity and waited on Talena’s direction.

  As we got closer she gave me a curt nod and smiled at Jax. I felt him stand a little taller.

  “Ajax,” she said in a loud, clear voice. “They still got you shackled to this dead weight?”

  My partner rubbed the side of his neck and let out a resigned whistle. “TPD transfer requests are so slow these days.” His eyes crinkled, amused at his own joke. “How are you?”

  “Suspicious,” she said. “What do you two want?”

  I held out my peace offering: the coffee and crullers I’d gotten that morning from the diner. I handed them all over to Talena, along with the morgue photo. There was no point in hiding why I was there. I wanted to know if my Jane Doe was a candy, and Talena was a walking encyclopedia of faces and names on the street.

  She dismissed the group with a clap of her hands and a reminder to “Check back in three hours. If I don’t see you, we’ll come looking.” I watched her with surprise as the others marched off to interact with the candies lounging in doorways and flagging down cars. Talena had worked with other activists before, but this group was different. They were clearly taking orders. The idea of Talena ordering people around was difficult to process when I still remembered carrying her to bed in her Plucky Duck jammies after she’d failed to stay up late enough to watch the TV movie of the week.

  Talena held the crullers and crime scene shot in one hand and the coffee in the other. Both wrists were bedecked with hand-woven bracelets of beads and yarn, gifts from the children of candies or homeless families she’d helped; Hells, some may even have been from candies who were children themselves. I spent my days chasing justice for the dead. Talena spent hers trying to help the living.

  She brought the cup to her lips and frowned. “It’s cold.”

  “You like iced coffee.”

  Talena brought the cup to her ear and sloshed the contents, as if listening for the clink of nonexistent cubes. “This isn’t iced,” she said. “It’s just not hot.”

  I shrugged. “Ice would’ve melted by now. Then it’d have been not hot and watered down.” There’d been a time when we might’ve ended up in a screaming match about forgotten ice. But it’d only been a month since she’d been hospitalized after ingesting poison intended for me, then arrested and falsely accused of murder. Maybe that had mellowed her. Maybe it made me appreciate her more. The reason didn’t matter as much as the result—neither of us escalated the argument. She merely rolled her eyes and drank the lukewarm coffee as she studied Jane’s mutilated face.

  “Not a candy.” Talena handed the photo back to me. “Or if she is, I haven’t seen her.”

  I didn’t put the photo away. “Not sure what makes someone do that kind of violence,” I said.

  “Hate’s a pyramid,” she said, as if I knew what that meant.

  She noticed my confusion. “No one starts off doing something like that. It starts with something small. Little things teach people that being a little cruel is okay,” she said. “And people who want to be cruel take that and run with it. Urging on others and telling them it’s okay.” Talena frowned, an expression of sadness more than anger. “It’s like a single drop of hate can sour an ocean of kindness.”

  The street noise was increasing, probably some imps on a gambol, so I stepped closer. Behind Talena, the brick walls were dotted with gang tags and encoded messages. Some I understood, but most were meant for eyes much younger than mine. The gangs and crews that ruled the streets when I was a teenager were long forgotten now. But laid on top of the tags were signs even the most street-naive of readers could understand. Strangers get out, read a particularly direct version. A more poetic version proclaimed: Let the Nation Thirst. Feed Titan First. All variations of the theme we’d found at the murder scene. I slid Jane’s photo back into my coat pocket, and rummaged around to see if I had a shot of the mural at the crime scene. I wanted to show that photo to her as well.

  Talena sipped the coffee and grimaced. I’d gotten the sugars wrong, too. She popped the top off the cup and crammed half a donut into the light brown liquid. She kept talking as she ate. “Kids hear a friend call a woman a whore. Okay. Next time they say it to her face. Time after that?” She frowned. “It gets said with a slap. Then a fist. Then she’s on a slab, and what did she expect? She’s just a whore, right?”

  Behind me, Jax said, “Broken windows.”

  Talena’s eyes brightened. “Kind of like that, yeah.” Then to me: “Next
time make it hot or cold. This room temperature shit’s barely drinkable.”

  There were shouts from down the street. I turned to my right. A group of imps sped through the crowd, jostling each other and the surrounding pedestrians as they slapped fliers on any available surface. Although costumed, I guessed they were young; they moved with the speed and frenetic energy I remembered having as a teenager.

  The imps began chasing one another around a bicycle-driven food cart. The cart’s vendor, an older man, attempted to shoo them away. One of the imps pushed the vendor. He staggered back, then another shoved him forward. The imps circled him, screaming insults and dancing at the edge of his reach as they jabbed him with their false horns and claws. The vendor staggered, falling against the cart. This was more than a standard gambol.

  Jax started toward the group, but I moved in the opposite direction, back toward the Hasam.

  Talena barked out a commanding, “Hey!” but the situation was already escalating. Two of the youths put their shoulders into the food truck, toppling it over as another shoved the vendor to the ground. The older man hit the sidewalk hard, and when he tried to rise one of the imps followed through with a kick to the ribs.

  Reaching into the Hasam I tripped the siren, and from the foot well the button cap flared once, painting me with red and making me look like an imp as well.

  The kids turned and scattered. Ajax chased after them.

  “Dammit,” I muttered. But I followed Ajax as he bounded toward the assailants.

  The revelers turned the corner, running as fast as their over-weighted, long-haired costumes would allow. The foot traffic parted as they approached, many onlookers whistling in encouragement without knowing what they were cheering on. No one would slow down an imp in the middle of a gambol. That’d be against the holiday spirit.

  My partner had slowed to a jog and stood glaring at the alley the kids must have disappeared down. There was no point in pursuing, and I called out for Jax to leave it be. They were long gone, and I already knew what would happen when we talked to the man whose street cart had been overturned.