People of the City

by Marshall Ryan Maresca

  “Eliminate?” Miri asked. She went back over to her desk. “No, that would never do. She dies, we might have a martyr. That will drive Hemmit further toward conspiracy.”

  Not to mention Dayne. She knew, as much as Dayne loved her, his bond with Amaya was deep. He would not let her death go.

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “If the problem is what she might know, then the solution is simple,” Miri said. She unlocked one drawer, and from there, released a panel underneath her desk. She thumbed through the folders inside that secret niche, finding the right one. A plan to handle Amaya, as well as several other problems that had been brewing. If Altarn was so intent on action, now was as good a moment as any to move forward. She handed it over to Altarn. “We discredit her, and thus disempower her. And from there, she will be easy to discourage from further prying. Why kill her when we can make her feckless?”

  “This is why I like to deal with you.” Altarn took the folder as she stood up. “You always have a plan, and I do relish the way your mind works.”

  “Here to serve, you and the country, however I can,” Miri said. “Please leave the way you came and try not to disturb me here again.”

  “I do not promise,” Altarn said. She looked back down at the uniform. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

  “I’ll arrange for a seamstress to visit your home, discreetly,” Mirianne said. “She will be efficient. I know you have many initiatives on your plate right now, and your time is always something I respect.”

  Altarn shrugged and went out the secret door.

  Miri sighed. She knew something like this would come, but it didn’t matter. She had plans in place for all of them. Amaya, Jerinne, the ones at the Veracity, and of course, Dayne. Especially Dayne. It would break her heart, but when she needed to destroy him, she was prepared.

  Chapter 4

  DAYNE DID NOT HAVE A proper shield. He had the one the Parliament had given him, hanging on his wall. Far more useful as art than as protection. It was metal, and it was painted in Tarian gray and silver, but it was cheap, light, and flimsy. Dayne would still put it on his arm when he dressed in uniform, for no other reason than it did look appropriate. But he hated the thing. It was a reminder of his counterfeit posting. Still, he was going to meet Haberneck’s people in Dentonhill, so it was best to look the part.

  He was putting it on his arm when a knock came on the door. “Come,” he called, expecting Haberneck. Instead, Jerinne came in, in her full uniform, but lacking the shield.

  “It looks like you’re about to get into some business,” she said. “Need some company?”

  “You looking to make yourself useful?” he sent back at her. “Shouldn’t you be—”

  “Every other third-year is with their mentors, who are getting protection details with Parliament members.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Well, I’m about to head across the river with—ah, there you are.”

  Haberneck had walked in. “Are we ready . . . oh, Miss Fendall. Are you joining us?”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Dentonhill,” Haberneck said. “And I should apologize for earlier—”

  “Not your fault,” Jerinne said, her tone a bit clipped. “Don’t worry. What’s in Dentonhill?”

  “Missing children,” Dayne said.

  Jerinne nodded. “Of course, however I can help.”

  “Glad to have you,” Dayne said, double-checking the strap on his sham of a shield. “Let’s go.”

  Haberneck had arranged a carriage, which took them across the river and dropped them off on a drab-looking corner, with high, windowless brick tenements in every direction.

  “Dreary,” Jerinne said. “But nothing is on fire.”

  “On fire?” Haberneck asked.

  “I helped out the Constabulary in Aventil a few weeks ago. The gang war going on there leaves some buildings just . . . smoldering. It’s very strange.”

  “Aventil has a serious gang problem,” Haberneck said, as if it was a fact. “It’s rather tragic.”

  “That’s what I saw,” she said. “But I heard Dentonhill was a lot more crime-ridden.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Haberneck said. “It does have a drug problem, but that stems from the lives of the people here. Most of them are just desperate folk, trying to do good work, but the work isn’t there. So, they turn to ways to escape their pain, and that leads to the drugs.”

  “I’ll never understand that,” Jerinne said.

  “So who are we seeing?” Dayne asked as they approached a tenement.

  “This is Elvin, distant cousin, and his wife Gabrelle. Well, it’s their home, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they have other neighbors in their flop.”

  “They know we’re coming?” Dayne asked. “I don’t want to impose.”

  “I’ve warned them,” Haberneck said. “Which is why I expect there will be others there. Several kids have gone missing, so the parents are gathering together.”

  “Have you gone to Rainey about this?” Jerinne asked. “She was—”

  Dayne shook his head. “I know she was working on a case that led to missing children. This may be connected. If it is—”

  “I was going to visit her place later tonight,” Jerinne said. “I’ll tell her what’s up.”

  Dayne gave her another look. “Why are you going there?”

  “Her daughter’s my friend,” Jerinne said. “I like to see her.”

  Dayne understood. “Her daughter is the glove girl at the Majestic,” he said. “You’re sweet on her.”

  “That—” Jerinne said, her voice instantly defensive. Then she softened her tone. “That isn’t the only reason. Not that anything is happening there. Or even would. I don’t know. It must be easier for you.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Dayne said. “Saints know, I feel at sea with Lady Mirianne.”

  “I thought you two were great,” Jerinne said. “I mean, she dotes on you.”

  “And I adore her,” he said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that our worlds do not align. I definitely feel she is keeping me at length from part of her life. I don’t know how to reconcile that.”

  “Love finds a way,” Jerinne said. “Isn’t that what all those pennyhearts say?”

  “Yes,” Dayne said quietly. He had read too many of them, first when he was learning how to read with Miri as children, and now as a way to fill the time in the long hours where nothing was asked of him.

  They approached the apartment door, where Haberneck knocked before entering. Dayne and Jerinne followed him into the place: a tight, warm home, with cracked plaster walls and a ceiling slightly too low for Dayne’s comfort. He needed to crouch down to enter.

  The place was also full of people—at least twenty, plus small children. Everyone was talking, drinking cider or beer, children running about.

  “Hey all,” Haberneck called out. “I brought some friends.”

  All eyes went to Dayne.

  “Saints, he’s a big one!” one person called.

  One of the running children crashed into Dayne’s leg. She looked up at him, her eyes wide, and then screamed, “It’s the giant!”

  More children screamed.

  “Hey, hey, settle!” Haberneck said. “My friend’s a big guy, but he’s not a giant. He’s a good guy.” A few of the adults gathered up the children and brought them to the other room.

  “Sorry,” Dayne said as one of the men came up to him, handing him a beer.

  “It’s nothing. Kids being kids. Wow, look at you two. Actual Tarians, swords and everything. You said, Gol, but I didn’t believe it.”

  “You’re Elvin?” Dayne said, offering his hand. “Hi, I’m Dayne. This is Jerinne. I understand there are children missing?”

  Elvin took his hand and led them to chairs. All the adults
in the apartment gathered around, crowding into every space they could to see Dayne.

  “So, friend,” Elvin said. “What can you two do about this?”

  “I can’t promise anything,” Dayne said. “But start with telling me what’s happening.”

  Elvin looked to Haberneck first, who gave a nod, and then he started. “So, kids go missing here. That’s been a thing, especially the doxy kids in the park. It happens.”

  “Doxy kids?” Jerinne asked.

  “The street ladies,” one of the women whispered. “They’re too, you know, fallen to have proper homes. They camp in the park with their children, poor things.”

  “Tragic, tragic,” other women said.

  “I’m standing right here!” one woman shouted.

  Elvin continued. “You’d hear about those kids going missing, other ones on the block. Always seemed too much, but the sticks, they said it was a thing that happened.”

  “Stupid sticks,” another man said.

  “They’re in the pocket, they are,” one woman said. “We all know it.”

  “But something changed?” Dayne asked.

  “The last two weeks, it cranked up. Not a thing that just happens.”

  “All the kids in the doxy camp,” the woman who shouted before said. Her eyes were red and tearing. “In one night, all of them. Gone.”

  “Then more in the neighborhood,” Elvin said.

  “At least twenty,” someone else said.

  “Twenty!” one woman said, her voice breaking. “My Molly!”

  “My Astin!”

  “Oscar!”

  “All right, all right,” Elvin said.

  Dayne’s heart was breaking. “I’m so sorry. And the constables didn’t say anything?”

  “Took reports,” the woman whose daughter Molly was missing. “Said they would look into it.”

  “Ain’t no one look into anything.”

  “What should they look into?” Jerinne asked.

  A hushed silence fell over the room.

  “Fenmere,” the doxy woman said quietly. “Every dark and twisted thing in this part of town, he’s the seed of it.”

  “Who’s Fenmere?” Dayne asked.

  No one looked like they wanted to answer.

  The doxy woman answered again. “He’s the man behind the drugs here. The effitte and the efhân. He runs that, he runs the dox houses, he’s got the sticks under his thumb.”

  “He’s taking kids?”

  “I didn’t say that,” she said. “But nothing happens in Dentonhill that he doesn’t touch.” She glared at the other people. “I know one or two of you have coin in your pocket from him. Or a vial.”

  “Like you never did, Maxi,” one woman said.

  “I’ve been clean since spring,” Maxi said.

  “So he knows something?” Dayne asked. “Maybe someone he can’t buy should have a word.”

  “You?” Elvin asked.

  “Where do I find him?”

  Again, the silence.

  “Rutting sinners, all of you,” Maxi said. “If Elvin won’t take you—”

  “One thing,” Jerinne said. “Tell me about the giant.”

  “What giant?”

  “The little girl said Dayne was ‘the giant.’ As in a specific one. What did she mean?”

  The adults all shrugged.

  “I saw it.”

  A little boy in the doorway to the back room. He shuffled forward, with an older girl standing behind him, hands comfortingly on his shoulder.

  “What did you see?” Dayne asked.

  “When Jilly and Goady were taken,” the boy said. “I saw it. They had gone into the crushed house together, and I went with them, and they yelled at me to go away.”

  “Crushed house?” Dayne asked.

  “An empty tenement a block away,” Elvin said. “It’s half collapsed, and we tell kids to stay clear, but . . .”

  “Kids go play in there anyway,” Maxi said.

  “I stayed in the corner,” the kid went on. “I was mad, I wanted to play with them. They went in the basement, and I heard them scream. I went halfway down the stairs, and I saw him. The giant.”

  “Tell us about him,” Jerinne said.

  “Bigger than him,” the kid said, pointing at Dayne. “And his skin was shiny. He scooped up Jilly and Goady, and went in a hole in the wall.”

  “A hole in the wall in the basement?” Dayne asked.

  “And I heard him,” the boy said in whispered horror. “He said . . . he said, ‘Gurond take. Take the children. Children for the Dragon.’”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this?” Elvin asked.

  “He told us all before,” the girl behind the little boy said. “We tried to tell you.”

  “Can you show us this ‘crushed house’?” Dayne asked. “And where we can find this Fenmere fellow?”

  Elvin got to his feet. “We can do that, yeah. You’re going to do something about this?”

  “I promise you I will try,” Dayne said, taking the man’s hand. “I don’t know where it will lead me, but I will look for your children, and do what I can to bring those responsible to justice.”

  Verci arrived at Kimber’s not sure what he was going to find. Asti had sent a note that he needed to come urgently, so he locked up the shop and came.

  “Your brother isn’t about to drag you into some other scheme, is he?” Raych asked as they came in. “We’re finally settling into normal.”

  “I don’t know,” Verci said. “I know that Enanger Lesk has been dying in one of the beds upstairs. Maybe this is it for him.”

  “What’s he dying of?”

  “Asti stabbing him.”

  “And Asti has been watching over him or something?”

  “Well, Nange apologized,” Verci said.

  “For being stabbed?”

  “For the reasons Asti stabbed him. It’s complicated.”

  Raych sighed, a deep, exhausted sigh. “Most things are with the two of you.”

  They didn’t even get into the taproom. Asti came down the stairs two at a time. “Took you long enough.”

  “What’s going on?” Verci asked.

  “Tarvis,” Asti said. “I found him in the alley.”

  “His body?”

  “No, he’s alive,” Asti said.

  That was surprising. The violent little boy had launched himself into a rampage of rage and revenge that Verci was certain would end in self-destruction. “So what happened?”

  “I’m not sure. He could barely talk. He was parched, half-starved. Exhausted. I got him in here and Kimber has been taking care of him.”

  “You said it was an emergency.”

  “He was rambling, surely out of his mind,” Asti said. “But he said something about the other kids. Stolen kids.”

  “Stolen?” Raych asked. “By who?”

  “He was probably delusional,” Verci said.

  “Maybe,” Asti said. “But remember the Thorn asked if we had heard anything about missing children?”

  Verci nodded. “You think this is connected?”

  “I think I want to do right by that kid,” Asti said. Verci understood why. Asti felt an odd kinship to the boy, and guilt over the death of his brother. “And if there are other kids, and the Thorn knows something? If those kids are from our neighborhood?”

  “Right,” Verci said.

  “How can you do anything?” Raych asked.

  “Well, we’ve got to get word to the Thorn,” Asti said. “The only way I know how to do that is through Mila.”

  Verci sighed. “So, let’s pay her a visit.”

  The collapsed apartment building had been a waste of time. Dayne and Jerinne, with the help of Haberneck and his cousin, searched through the parts of the ba
sement they could get into. If there was a passage for a giant to come from, Dayne couldn’t find it, and the unstable nature of the building made him uncomfortable with pushing around too much.

  “It looks like the ceiling over there collapsed recently,” Jerinne said, pointing to a section of the basement they couldn’t get to. “Maybe there’s something more there.”

  “If there is, we can’t get into it,” Dayne said. “Let’s go see this Fenmere fellow.”

  It was already nearly evening by the time they got out of the building, brushed themselves off, and let Elvin lead them to the house.

  “What’s the plan here?” Haberneck asked.

  “Not entirely sure,” Dayne said. “This man is supposedly a crime lord, but he lives in this large, well-appointed home, in the open. I need to get my own sense of him. He lives in this neighborhood, as well. Maybe his humanity can be appealed to when it involves missing children.”

  “Barring that, we have swords,” Jerinne said.

  “No,” Dayne pressed. “We’re not going to resort to violence here. We’ll see if we can have a civilized conversation.”

  “Right,” Haberneck said. “I’m wondering if it’s better or worse for me to join you here.”

  Dayne understood. “Your presence could make us seem like we’re formally representing the government here.”

  Haberneck chuckled. “I was actually thinking if someone saw a new member of Parliament visiting the home of a known criminal boss, but I like how you think.”

  “Perhaps we should handle it alone,” Dayne said.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” Haberneck said, shaking Dayne’s hand. “And I really thank you for your time and effort.”

  He went off with his cousin.

  “Isn’t he a Traditionalist?” Jerinne asked once they were gone. “He doesn’t seem like one.”

  “He is,” Dayne said. “But something like this goes beyond partisan opinions.”

  “No, it’s just, I’m surprised to . . . from what I’ve seen, a fair amount of Dishers talk a good talk about the needs of the common man, but what they actually do . . . they stay at quite a remove. This guy, he’s really in it.”

  “As are we,” Dayne said. He had to admit, he was excited to be out and about, doing something that mattered. It was far preferable to being stuck in the Parliament, with no role beyond passing official reports to the press.