The burglar of sliceharb.., p.11
The Burglar of Sliceharbor, page 11
part #4 of Edgewhen Series
“What? I thought the stuff I gave you last night was good enough. ‘Pretty good.’” He nodded at Gusty. “That’s what he said.”
“Yeah, it was pretty good,” Tisha said. “All right, then. Why are we here in this alley?”
The Crane unslung his shopping bag from his shoulder and fished something out of it. It was a small bundle of cloth.
He offered it to Tisha. She took it.
The bundle was light. Tisha squeezed it. She felt something like a small, desiccated carrot.
“It smells like rotting meat,” Gusty said.
“Open it,” the Crane said.
Tisha unwrapped the bundle and spread it open on her palm. “Is that a finger?” she asked. In the gloomy alley, it was hard to tell.
“Mendu’s finger,” said the Crane. “See the ink stains?”
“Not really,” she said. She handed it up to Gusty.
Wrinkling his nose, Gusty studied the severed finger. “Are those ink stains, or just rot? In this weather, this thing isn’t going last too long.”
He gave a tiny sniff. “All right,” he said. “I guess I do smell a little ink. You think this is Mendu’s?”
“Yeah,” the Crane said. “An orange man handed the package to my little brother this afternoon. He asked him to deliver it to me.”
The Crane had a brother? Tisha had imagined him without family. He had a reputation for being a loner.
“And your little brother knew where to find you?” Tisha asked.
“I was staying with him and my sister,” the Crane said.
“All right,” Tisha said.
Gusty retied the bundle and offered it to the Crane.
“You can keep it,” the Crane said. “For the investigation. But I need something in return.”
As far as Tisha knew, the investigation into Mendu’s murder had not yet begun. The finger would probably be maggot food before Mendu’s family found a judge – if Mendu had any family. So the finger was useless.
But the judge might need the Crane’s testimony, so it didn’t hurt to string him along.
“All right,” Tisha said. “What do you need?”
“I need a place to hide! I can’t stay with my sister – not when the Too-Tall brothers are coming to kill me.”
Gusty asked, “Why us, Crane? Why don’t you get help from one of your dockside friends?”
“I can’t trust them,” the Crane said. “They’re all criminals!”
“That’s the big disadvantage of being a burglar,” Gusty said. “All your friends are as dishonest as you are.”
“Yeah,” the Crane agreed. Gusty’s words had been so close to the truth that the Crane hadn’t noticed he was being mocked.
Tisha asked, “What were you thinking we could do, Crane? Do you want us to arrest you for stealing the Sun Scroll? Headquarters is right next to the Enclave. I’m not sure our prison doors would be stout enough to protect you.”
“What if I snuck in?”
“Breaking into jail?” Tisha asked. “You’re really desperate, aren’t you?”
“I saw what happened to Mendu. I don’t want to end up like that.”
“I understand,” Tisha said. “Gusty, do you have any ideas?”
Her partner was sniffing the breeze.
“Gusty?”
“I smell smoke,” he said. “And it’s not a barbecue.”
The Crane looked from Gusty to Tisha. He frowned. “I’ll be right back.”
The Crane reached inside his shopping bag and withdrew some spiky iron things that he strapped to his hands and feet. Then, like a gecko, he clambered up the wall of the alley and disappeared over the edge of the roof.
Tisha and Gusty looked up and waited.
The Crane’s head appeared silhouetted against the alley’s narrow crack of sky. “Nothing to worry about,” he called down to them. “The fire is down at the docks. It’s a long way from here.”
A fire! Tisha looked at Gusty. His nostrils flared and his eyes grew big and round.
“We gotta go,” she said.
As they ran out of the alley, the Crane called, “Hey, wait! I need your help!”
* * *
Although the Urban Cohort spends most of its resources on policing the streets, it is, by necessity, a multi-purpose force. If a Child of the Sun or a foreigner is drowning in one of Sliceharbor’s many canals, an urbie dives to the rescue. If a cart loses a wheel and spills lemons all over the street, an urbie directs people around the mess until the carter has recovered his or her fruit. If a cat gets stuck in a tree, an urbie helps the owner coax it down. And when a fire starts in Sliceharbor, urbies run to organize the bucket chains.
Bendoko knew this, but he didn’t realize urbies would run so far. He tried to catch up to Gusty and Tisha, but after a couple blocks, he realized they planned to run all the way to Lowtown. Bendoko decided he preferred to walk.
Oh, he’d been so close! She had pretty much agreed to help him, hadn’t she? Of course. She had to help him. After all, he’d given her all that good information, right?
On the other hand, she’d already saved his life once. Really, she didn’t owe him anything.
Bendoko’s footsteps slowed. It was crazy, really, going to the urbies. Maybe he should just hide out on the rooftops.
But he’d have to come down and eat sometime. And anyway, the Too-Tall brothers knew him: They’d be checking roofs.
No, getting help from Tisha and Gusty was still the best plan. He felt safe around Tisha, and maybe he could help Gusty track down the inside man. Maybe he could even steal the scroll back for them. Yeah. That would work. A business arrangement. Maybe they wouldn’t even turn him over to the judge afterwards … or at least, maybe Tisha would say something nice on his behalf.
So he’d go down to the docks, find Tisha and Gusty, maybe help them with their fire, and then make his business proposition. Yeah. That was a good plan.
So everything would be all right, if he could just find them again. But that wouldn’t be too hard. He knew where they were, right? Just look for the fire, follow the bucket chains, and he’d find them. Yeah.
Unless Tiny and Sunny found him first.
Bendoko realized he was walking all alone in the middle of the Canal Road. He decided he preferred to swim.
* * *
Bendoko emerged from the canal, sari dripping wet. He hurried along the Dock Road. Flames glowed brightly in the distance. He heard excited voices ahead.
Bendoko had not seen many fires in Sliceharbor, but he had taken advantage of the few he had attended. People were so distracted by the smoke and the flames that they paid little attention to their money strings.
As Bendoko neared the site of the blaze, he scanned the people in the bucket chains. Here and there, flickering firelight glinted off a copper-finned helmet, but Bendoko didn’t see either of his urbies.
An orange woman wearing nothing but a loincloth and a breastband stepped into his field of vision. “Come with us!” she told him. “We’re starting a chain to wet down the warehouse across the way.”
Bendoko followed, hoping to catch sight of Tisha, but she was not among the people gathering on the Long Dock.
The tide was out, and the dock was high above the water level. Two blue men in the water were filling empty buckets and hooking them to ropes held by strong orange men. The oranges hoisted the buckets, then lowered their hooks for the next load. Runners were carrying full buckets to the chain and returning with empty buckets to toss down to the swimmers. The scantily clad orange woman was adding people to the end of the chain so that the runners would not have to travel so far.
Bendoko was assigned a spot between an orange man and a blue man. The orange could handle a bucket with one hand, swing it across his body to the other hand, and pass it on to Bendoko. Making full use of his armspan, he was doing the work of three Bendoko-sized people.
Bendoko caught the heavy buckets as they descended on him and tried to keep their momentum going as he passed them on to the blue man. Catching buckets required his full attention and occupied both hands. Anyone could steal his money chain easily. For that matter, Sunny Too-Tall could slip up behind him and snap his neck before he even noticed. His last words would be, “Sorry for not catching the bucket.”
But leaving the bucket chain was out of the question. The orange giant was working so hard that even a miscreant like Bendoko would be ashamed if he didn’t do his own tiny part.
… Catch. Pass. … Catch. Pass. … Catch. Pass. …
Bendoko had no idea where the buckets were going. He had only a vague awareness of the people behind him passing the empty buckets back. Someone brought more buckets for the chain and the pauses between pass and catch became shorter.
Orange flames continued to lick the night sky. The wind blew the smoke inland, which was a pity because the mosquitoes were getting thick on the docks. Bendoko rubbed his ankles together to shake the insects off.
The flames had spread to several buildings, but Bendoko thought he could tell where the fire had started. It was the warehouse of Gisherwoku, the cotton importer who traded exclusively with the Mogadrel. At the Dock Market, Bendoko had heard oranges complaining that Gisherwoku was single-handedly funding the Mogadrel’s invasion of “the Motherland”. But that was just something people said, right? Nobody would set his warehouse on fire over it.
Well, a crazy person might.
Two crazy brothers might.
Bendoko kept catching the orange man’s buckets. Most of the oranges weren’t crazy.
* * *
Bendoko the Crane wasn’t the only one who realized the fire might have been intended as a message. Chonder – a Broad Market merchant who imported Mogadrel iron work, Mogadrel leather work, and Mogadrel cloth – had long feared that angry oranges would do something violent to disrupt his business. When he heard the news that Gisherwoku’s warehouse was on fire, he left the pool where he and his spouses had been enjoying the evening and hurried to check on his shop.
Chonder found no sign of fire, but his front door had been pried open. He rushed inside and lit an oil lamp.
At first, nothing seemed amiss. All his wares were still in the shop. He saw no sign of vandalism beyond the front door.
Then he found the body of Gisherwoku, whose neck had been broken.
* * *
The warehouse fire spread to adjacent buildings, but it did not spread fast. The thatch was wet from the afternoon’s rain. The walls of the adjacent buildings were mildewy and moss-covered. It took a while for them to dry out in the heat of the warehouse fire.
Bendoko’s bucket chain saved an adjacent warehouse by keeping its walls damp. Eventually, the urbies brought round the water engine – a huge barrel reservoir with a pump worked by two orange giants – and Bendoko was relieved of duty.
Urbies directed people toward the fires down the dock. Bendoko went with them, but he allowed himself to fall behind. His arms were tired, and his foot was still sore from being crushed last night.
He walked past the ruins of Gisherwoku’s warehouse. Steam hissed from charred beams as the water engine sprayed the smoldering wreckage. A salty sea breeze met the deep, black heat and blew flaming palm fronds into the sky.
Nothing to worry about, really. It had rained that afternoon, and all the roofs would be too damp to catch fire.
Except for the net maker’s shop where his little sister, Hertha, worked.
Bendoko forgot about his sore foot and broke into a run. The net maker’s workshop was on the other side of the block. He passed through a bucket chain by ducking under the legs of an orange woman and ran around the corner … right into an urbie wearing a helmet with one crumpled fin.
“Crane, what are you doing?”
Tisha! He’d found her!
“Tisha, there’s a net maker’s workshop on Sailor Street. I need you to get buckets there.”
“Crane, I think we’ve got this fire under control now. It isn’t going to cross the warehouse alley.”
Bendoko pointed at the flaming palm leaves dancing skyward. “What about that?”
“One or two stray embers aren’t going to start anything,” Tisha said. “Not tonight. The thatch is damp.”
“But the net maker’s workshop is bundle-thatched!”
Tisha looked at him blankly.
“It has lots of loose ends that catch fire easily. And the under layers stay dry.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just trust me, all right?”
Tisha studied his face. “All right,” she said. “I’ll try to get some buckets to Sailor Street.”
“Thanks,” Bendoko said. “I’ll meet you there!”
The alley behind the net maker’s had a stack of rotting crates (which was illegal because it was a fire hazard). Bendoko used the crates as steps and reached the eaves with a jump. He could smell the fires already.
As he had feared, the ends of the thatch had dried quickly after the rain, and the dry crackle of the layers under his feet told him the rain had not soaked in. Two spot fires were blazing, and another flaming palm frond had landed on the other side of the roof.
Bendoko curled his toes and kicked the frond off with the sole of his sandal. All right, that fire wouldn’t start. But what about the other two?
Bendoko took off his sari and wrapped it around his hands. The big spot-fire looked like more than he could handle, so he started beating at the smaller one. It was mostly in the top layers. The flames couldn’t penetrate very deeply into the tight thatch.
Bendoko focused on his work and tried not to worry about the bigger circle of flames. It was expanding, but there was nothing he could do without water. He glanced over the edge of the roof and saw Tisha’s helmet with the tell-tale crumpled fin.
“Tisha! I need the water up here!”
She looked up.
“How?” she asked.
“There are crates in the back alley! You can climb up.”
A moment later, Gusty’s copper-finned helmet and coppery eyebrows rose above the edge of the roof. He heaved a bucket up.
Bendoko grabbed it by the handle. Careful to keep his weight on the frame poles, he dragged the bucket into position above the flames.
He dumped it. Water rushed down and met the flaming thatch. A cloud of scalding steam blew up in Bendoko’s face. He staggered backward.
Dammit, dammit, dammit!
“Crane?” Gusty called. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine!” he called. His face felt blistery.
Smoke was still rising from both spot fires, but the flames were weaker now.
“I need another bucket.”
* * *
The net maker’s workshop had the only flammable roof on Sailor Street. Only the Crane would know something like that, Tisha thought with a smile.
With Gusty’s help, the skinny young man had put out the spot fires – although not before they had burned big holes in the thatch. Until the net maker got a thatcher, his workshop would have an indoor shower.
Gusty was guarding the roof, armed with a pole to push off any stray embers. The Crane was sitting on the street, and Tisha was tending his blistered head.
She soaked the edge of his singed sari in a bucket of water and draped the wet cloth over his scalp.
He winced.
“That was real brave, you know,” she told him.
“This is going to sting for a week,” he said.
“Probably,” she agreed. “I said it was brave, not smart. You could have let it burn, you know. No one was inside.”
“I know,” he said. “But my little sister works there. I didn’t want her to be out of a job.”
So he did have people he cared about: family. Maybe his family were the only people who cared about him.
“I’ve been thinking about your problem, Crane.”
“Which one?”
“The men who want to kill you.”
“Oh, yeah. Will you help me?”
“Yeah,” Tisha said. “You can hide out at my house.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s – that’s very kind of you. Thanks.”
“Well, it won’t be that great,” Tisha said. “You’ll have to stay locked in the cellar.”
“Locked in the cellar?”
“I’ve got two spouses and two kids at home.”
“Oh.” He thought about it. “Yeah, I see your point. All right, that’s fair.”
Tisha took the cloth off and soaked it again. She draped it gently over his face.
“Tisha?” he asked, voice muffled.
“Yeah?”
“You’ll catch those guys, won’t you? Tiny and Sunny?”
“Yeah, probably. Unless they ship out.”
“I doubt they’ll ship out,” the Crane said.
“We’ll catch them, then,” she said. She probably wouldn’t, but other urbies would. Word of Gisherwoku’s broken neck had already reached the docks, and his family would be pressing judges for an investigation at first light. The Too-Tall brothers would be apprehended for questioning as soon as they showed their faces.
“Good,” said the Crane. “I don’t want to stay locked in your cellar forever.”
Tisha laughed. “Trust me, Crane. I want you out of my house as soon as possible.”
“Yeah,” he said.
She dipped the cloth in water again.
“Tisha?”
“Yeah, Crane?”
“Could you do me one more favor?”
She chuckled. “What now, Crane?”
“Do you think –? Never mind.”
“What, Crane?”
“Do you think you could call me ‘Bendoko’?”
* * *
Senator Fanjei, representative of the ancient port of Thom-Hizo and admiral of the Republican Navy, spent the evening at the Senatorial Palace, where he received several messages.
The first message came from Fanjei’s own ship, the Thom-Hizo Warrior. Captain Tu reported flames on the waterfront.
Admiral Fanjei sent his thanks and invited Captain Tu to supply more details.
Captain Tu was a thorough man. His second message was quite informative:
The fire had started in a cotton warehouse. The owner – who had not yet been located – was well known for his commerce with Mogadwen. Supporters of the Reconciled Queendom believed his cotton purchases were helping fund the Mogadrel invasion.
