by Posey, Jay
“Haiku, of all people, I would think you especially should know precisely what I am capable of doing,” the man answered. “Besides if you go with him, I would have to assume you did all the work. And I already know what you are capable of.”
It was too late. Wren had trapped himself. He’d said he was willing to do anything. He couldn’t take it back now. No matter how crazy it seemed, or how scary, he had to show this old man that he had the will he’d claimed to have. He glanced out the window. There was still a lot of daylight left. Plenty of time to cross that span of open ground and find a place to hole up.
“I said I would do it,” Wren said, and he turned back to the old man. “So I’ll do it.”
“Very well,” the man said, and he stood up. “Haiku can take you down. Come back in the morning, then we shall see if you have anything more than pluck.”
“I do,” Wren said. “Eagerness.” The old man actually smiled at that.
“Yes. Pluck and eagerness.” He shook his head. “Not the best of qualities.”
With that, the old man turned and left the room. They sat in silence for a few seconds. Haiku was just looking at him like he didn’t know what to say. Wren didn’t really know what to say either, so he just said, “I take it that means everything didn’t go well.”
“I’m sorry, Wren. I knew it was a long shot, but I never imagined it would go like this.”
“It’s not your fault, Haiku,” Wren said, and Haiku barked a humorless laugh.
“It is, and it is mine alone. You don’t have to do this. I’ll talk to him.”
Wren shook his head. “I already said I’d do it. I don’t think talking him out of it will count.”
Haiku opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again without saying anything.
“I guess I should get going,” Wren said.
Haiku nodded. They both stood and walked to the door where their packs were laid.
“How are you on supplies?” Haiku asked.
“Fine,” Wren said. “Still have some food and water. Enough to get me through the night.”
“It’s not you starving to death I’m worried about,” Haiku said.
Wren just nodded and picked up his pack.
“Head back the way we came,” Haiku said. “There were a couple of taller buildings we passed that might be good for you. Look for somewhere high. Somewhere with stairs is OK, but a ladder is better. If you can’t find that, try to find a small space, a place you have to crawl to get in.”
Haiku led him back down the stairs, feeding him a continuous stream of advice of what to look for and what to avoid. Even after he’d opened the main door and Wren had moved outside, he kept talking for nearly ten more minutes. He pointed out a couple of locations across the open ground that he thought might be good places to start looking for shelter. Eventually Wren’s head was so full of things to think about, he was afraid he was going to start forgetting everything. And he was anxious to get on the move.
“OK, Haiku, I’ve got it. I need to go.”
Haiku nodded. “You want me to stand here for a while? So you can see me?”
“No,” Wren said. “He said I have to do this on my own. If it’s OK with you, I guess I’d rather just go.”
“Good luck, Wren,” Haiku said. “I know you can do this. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“OK,” Wren said. “You can close the door.”
Haiku smiled at him a final time, and then stepped back inside and slowly shut the door. A moment later, the heavy bolts slid into place, and Wren knew he was, possibly for the first time in his life, well and truly alone.
TWELVE
jCharles stood beside the crib, staring down at his sleeping daughter. His little baby girl. Grace. Mol had chosen the name but if there was a more perfect one out there, jCharles didn’t know what it was. Grace. Free and unmerited favor. A precious gift, more precious than life itself; that he had neither earned nor deserved. And yet there she was, sound asleep, looking like an angel.
And he couldn’t help but think of his other little angel, Jakey, gone many years now. The same tragedy that had robbed Mol of the use of her legs had also stolen the life of his boy. A tragedy that was the fruit born from the life he’d led before, the wages of choices he’d made. He’d buried his child, and with him the hope of ever having another. Yet here he was now, again a father, looking down at a miracle. A second chance. The wonder of it was almost too much to bear.
“Hey,” Mol’s whisper crept catlike into the room from behind him. jCharles quickly wiped his eyes, turned, smiled at his beautiful wife standing there at the door. “If you wake her, you’re the one that has to get her back to sleep.”
He nodded, turned back to the crib. Time to let the little lady sleep. He kissed his fingertips, laid them gently on the top of Grace’s head. She stirred under the touch, and he held his breath. He loved his daughter more than he’d dreamed possible. But especially when she was sleeping peacefully. And he knew Mol was serious. It’d taken almost an hour to get Grace asleep the first time around, and if she woke up fussy, it’d take longer the second time. Fortunately, she settled without opening her eyes, and jCharles slowly drew back from the crib and joined Mol in the front room. She was already sitting on the couch, feet curled up underneath her. He stood by the door to the bedroom and just watched her for a time. She was staring up slightly, no doubt scanning some internal application. After a few moments, she turned and looked at him.
“You all right?” she asked.
He smiled. “I sure do love you, Mol.”
She chuckled and went back to whatever she’d been working on. “That baby’s making you soft, Twitch.”
“Don’t I know it.”
jCharles crossed the room and sat in his chair across from her. There was already a drink waiting for him on the end table. He sure did love his wife. He took a sip, held it in his mouth, laid his head back as the vapors infused his palate. When he swallowed, warmth rolled down his throat, radiated through his chest, where it merged with his sense of gratitude and blossomed into a tranquil contentment. This was his home. It didn’t look like much by most standards. There were plenty of folks in Greenstone that had more money, more flash, more stuff. But in that moment, he was dead certain he was the richest man in town. Maybe in the world.
But as he sat there, he felt the disquiet rippling just beneath the surface of his sense of well-being. Something tugging at the corners of his consciousness that he’d been intently trying to ignore. The trouble in the east. Across the Strand. It was an entire world away, a place he’d never been, a place that was more imagined than real to him. And yet out of that distant place, Wren had come to him, broken, defeated, in despair. jCharles had wanted to forget all about what Wren had told him. The story seemed impossible, even though he’d believed every word Wren had told him. Maybe it hadn’t been as bad as Wren had thought, though. He’d been unconscious for the end of it, after all.
But then jCharles thought about Cass out there, somewhere. If she was still out there. She’d sent her son back to him. The magnitude of that choice hadn’t been lost on him; the desperation of it, the hope in it. Doing whatever she had to, to protect what she most loved. And the fact that she hadn’t followed after... She’d sent her son here, trusting that he’d been taken care of.
“You think we did the right thing?” jCharles said.
Mol’s eyes refocused, met his. “Which thing, darling?”
“Letting Wren go off with Haiku, instead of keeping him here with us.”
She looked at him with a quiet smile, searched his eyes. “We did the right thing,” she said, “in recognizing it wasn’t our choice to make.”
He nodded and sipped his drink. A moment later, she continued.
“He’s not Jakey, Twitch. As much as we want him to be.”
Hard words spoken in kindness. She’d put her finger right on the heart of his concern, clarified it for him before he’d even recognized it for himself. She’d always h
ad a way of seeing him better than he could see himself. He teared up again at the words, looked down into his drink so she wouldn’t see.
“No,” jCharles said. “No, he’s not. I know that. In my head, I know that.” He took another pull of his drink.
“You’re not alone in that,” Mol said. “And heart’s a different matter. It was the hardest thing in the world, him asking me what he should do. Took everything I had not to tell him he ought to stay here with us. Be our boy. But it wouldn’t have been fair to ask him to be something for us, instead of what he needs to be for himself.”
jCharles wiped a tear out of his eye with his thumb. Looked back up at his wife.
“I don’t know when you got so wise,” he said with a smile.
“Oh, I’ve always been this way. It’s just that you’re finally getting wise enough to see it.”
“I sure do love you.”
“You mentioned.”
He drained the rest of his drink, stood and crossed to her, kissed her on the top of her head.
“One of these days,” he said, “maybe you’ll finally get the kind of man you deserve.”
“Maybe,” she said. “If you’ll ever grow up enough to see he’s you.”
“Not likely.”
“No, but a girl can dream. You headed out?”
jCharles nodded. “Just downstairs.”
“Business meeting?”
“Sorta.”
“It going to cost us a lot?”
“Not sure yet.”
She made a face at him, a playful show of disapproval.
“It’ll be worth it, though,” he said. “Trying to hire a runner.”
The playfulness disappeared from her look. As usual, she understood what he meant before he even had to explain.
“Pay him well.”
jCharles nodded and kissed Mol again, and headed to the door.
“Twitch?” she said just before he pulled the door shut. He turned back, poked his head back into the apartment. Mol looked at him gravely. “You’re still on duty if Gracie wakes up.”
He smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”
He closed the door behind him and headed down the narrow staircase to the bar below. Nimble, his long-time bartender and trusted righthand man, was behind the bar, waiting for him. It wasn’t as crowded as jCharles would have liked to have seen it for this time of night, but at least it’d be easier to do business. Nimble had kept the rear corner table clear, and all the tables near it. jCharles approached, and Nimble slid him a drink.
“Whatcha got for me, Nim?”
“Nay much,” Nimble said. He nodded towards a mismatched couple sitting up front near the door. “’ems two. And I don’t care for the fella.”
jCharles checked the two runners out from a distance. A man and a woman, about as different as they could be. The man had a clean, professional edge and an air of confident boredom. He was sporting some top-line gear, conspicuous enough to advertise without being an obviously gratuitous display. Clearly a man who knew the value of his own work and wanted to make sure everyone else had a good hint at it too. He was turned sideways in his chair, disgust at his companion thinly veiled.
The woman, on the other hand, was a ragged-looking creature. If she’d bathed, it probably hadn’t been this week. She was heavyset but her clothes were oversized, and she looked rumpled and disheveled. She was busy scraping a hunk of bread across the plate in front of her, gathering up every last possible molecule of whatever dish Nimble had served her on the house.
“Good credentials?”
“His come better,” Nimble said. “Maybe too much better.”
“But you don’t like him?”
“Nah.”
“Personal prejudice?”
“He don’t drink.”
jCharles smiled at that. “You want to sit in on this?”
“As you like,” Nimble said with a half shrug that suggested he didn’t.
“Yeah, I’d like.”
Nimble nodded. jCharles picked up his drink and headed for the table in the back. Nimble let out a short, piercing whistle that got the attention of every patron in the room. He motioned to the two runners. Everyone else went back to their own business with new and very obvious signs that they were paying absolutely no attention to anything that didn’t concern them. jCharles watched the runners as they came over to his table; sized up what they wore, how they moved, what caught their attention. The man walked with his shoulders back, head high, a pleasant look on his face as he made eye contact with jCharles. The woman hunched in on herself, eyes constantly roving everywhere but where jCharles was sitting.
The two runners sat across from jCharles with a chair between them. Nimble came and leaned against the wall, just behind jCharles.
“Thanks for coming out,” jCharles said. The man nodded curtly in acknowledgment. A military bearing. The woman just stared back expectantly, apparently waiting to hear the details of the deal.
“I want to be respectful of your time, so I’ll cut right to it. I need someone to make a run to Morningside for me. Out and back, quick as possible.”
The man’s eyebrows went up in mild surprise. The woman still wore the same expression.
“Trip’s easy enough,” the man said. “But I’ll need very detailed specifications on the cargo. I’ll transfer a datasheet for you to fill out–”
“No cargo,” jCharles said. “Except information.”
“Oh,” the man said.
“You’ve been to Morningside?” jCharles asked.
“Several times,” the man answered. “I can transfer a travel log, if you like.”
“And you?” jCharles asked the woman. She blinked languidly. Dipped her head. “So what’s your base rate?” he asked, turning back to the man.
“A day out, a day back, plus whatever time I have to spend on location,” the man said. “Fifteen hundred, plus in-city expenditures. If I’ll be making contact with any of your associates, it’ll be an extra two to five hundred, based on several metrics I’ll need to evaluate. I can transfer a detailed breakdown of the costs, if you like.”
“So call it two thousand?” jCharles said, more for the benefit of the woman who looked like she wasn’t really paying attention.
“Depending on associates,” the man corrected.
jCharles looked to the woman, pointed at her to make sure she knew he was talking to her now. “How about you? Base rate for a run?”
She made a show of thinking it over, scratched under her jaw with the back of her hand. “Short day make bad runnin’,” she said. “Call it t’ree t’ousand out, two when I back.” Her accent was heavy, her ths rounded.
Nimble let out a low whistle. Usually the runner who offered the second bid tried to at least match the quote of the first.
“Five thousand?” jCharles said, and the man across from him chuckled. “You do know that’s over twice what your friend here just quoted me?”
She dipped her head again, apparently unconcerned or unimpressed by the proceedings thus far.
“I’ll transfer you a cost breakdown,” the man said graciously. “I can leave as early as the morning, if you can get me all the information I need and a thirty-percent good-faith payment up front.” He stood up, extended his hand to shake and close the deal. jCharles just watched the woman for a span, letting the man’s hand hover over the table.
“Your friend here is ready to do business at two thousand,” jCharles said. “Should I take it?”
“Sure,” she said. “If you don’ care abou’ Morn’side.”
The man looked at her with sharp indignation.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, as if it physically hurt him to call her ma’am. “I’ve made that trip several times. I have detailed travel logs. I’ve been running for twelve years, and I haven’t failed a single client.”
“May be he run,” the woman said, but she wasn’t looking at the man. She was talking to jCharles alone, as if the man wasn’t even there. “But you beli
eve he cross dat Strand, you deserve you lose your money.” She nodded. “Sure I know.”
jCharles smiled in spite of himself. The woman’s words confirmed his hunch. The man looked the part, certainly. But he had the feel of someone who’d gone well out of his way to do just that, to look the part. And here this woman sitting across from him looked closer to a homeless drifter than someone who was a handshake away from a fat wad of money. She was direct, had no patience for expected manners or business etiquette; here for a job, for the price stated, take it or leave it. In other words, a pro.
“Thanks for your time,” jCharles said, extending his hand to the man.
“I’ll transfer the documents,” the man said, smiling while he shook hands.
“That won’t be necessary,” jCharles replied. The man’s fake smile melted away. He just stood there blinking for a moment. “Thanks for your time,” jCharles repeated, taking his hand back. The man looked at him, then to the woman. Then up at Nimble.
“Get faffed,” Nimble said.
The man made a disgusted noise and then shook his head. “You’re a bunch of empty-headed–”
“Faff off, ye!” Nimble barked, and the man flinched. The bar quieted, and a couple of jCharles’s regulars started to get out of their seats, just in case things were about to get rowdy. But jCharles stilled them with a mild wave of the hand, and they slowly sank back to sitting. The man turned and tromped away to the front door, muttering to himself. Once he’d exited, jCharles turned his attention back to the woman.
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Edda,” she answered.
“You a good watcher, Edda?”
“Sure.”
“Well, Miss Edda, tell you what. I’ll pay you your three thousand now, to go out to Morningside and to take a look around. And I’ll pay you an additional five,” he held up five fingers for emphasis, “when you get back. If, and this is the important part, if what you tell me matches up with what I already know.”
“If it don’t?”
“Just tell the truth and it will,” jCharles said. “But I’ll guarantee you six thousand at a minimum.”
