Chapter 9
It wasn't long before there was another knock at firlesb> the door. I opened it to find an ipotane standing on the front step. Like most of his kind, he was stout and barrel-chested, with thick lips and a squat, pushed-in nose, and he walked about on a pair of horse's legs, the hooves of which were covered in padded booties to muffle their sound and impact on hardwood floors.
"The name's Gus, short for Augustus. Quid sent me. Where's the equipment ya need moved, lady?" he asked.
I directed the packer upstairs, and within fifteen minutes Gus managed to transport my welding equipment down two flights of stairs and into the back of a small wagon hitched to a bay centaur colt wearing a Peruvian wool hat. I knew from previous experience that it would have taken two strong men a half hour, and considerably more swearing, to accomplish the same task. Once everything was properly secured, I kissed Hexe good-bye and climbed up on the driver's seat alongside Gus.
"Put that crap away, Bayard!" Gus shouted as he kicked off the brake. "We got work to do!"
The centaur youth grumbled something under his breath as he turned off his Nintendo DS and returned it to the fanny-pack cinched about his waist.
"Colts today got no work ethic," the Teamster sniffed in disgust as the wagon began to roll. "They'd rather play with those damn gadgets than try and get a union card."
"You're just jealous because you can't figure out how to use one," Bayard said, tossing his head in both adolescent and equine defiance.
As we rolled through the early morning in the direction of the East River, I got a good look at the aftereffects of the riot. The streets were strewn with garbage from upended litter baskets, as well as trampled odds and ends from looted stores. Everywhere I heard the sound of brooms and the crystalline tinkle of broken glass as storekeepers swept what was left of their shopwindows into the gutter for the street cleaners. As we passed by what was left of a bakery, the owner paused long enough in his cleanup to fix me with a hostile glare.
Eventually we arrived in Pickman's Slip, a section of Golgotham comprising ramshackle warehouses, flophouses, and gin joints that fronted the water and serviced the longshoremen who worked the large pier that stretched out into the East River. Bayard led us along a narrow cobblestone street that twisted and turned between Colonial-era houses before heading down a back alley barely wide enough to permit more than a glimpse of sky. The narrow, muddy passageway dead-ended at the back of an old building that, according to the faded signage, had once sold sailcloth. The sun was not yet strong enough to burn away the heavy mist from the river, and the overall atmosphere was dreary and gray, which did nothing to assuage the misgivings I was starting to experience.
Just as I was about to tell Gus to take me back home, the door to the loading dock rolled open with a loud bang to reveal Quid, dressed in a canvas duster and knitted muffler, a blueprint tube tucked under one arm. The Kymeran favor broker was totally bald except for a pair of lime green eyebrows that resembled hairy caterpillars.
"Sorry about the short notice," he said by way of greeting, "but the client called me up out of the blue this morning, insisting that the work be started immediately. Since it requires a skilled metalworker, I instantly thought of you."
"Thanks, I guess," I muttered as I studied the blueprints he'd handed me. "What the hell is this thing?"
"'No questions asked' means exactly that," Quid khatr tchided, wagging a finger in reprimand. "It also means 'No stories told.' Come along, now-I'll show you where you'll be working."
I followed Quid up a flight of stairs to the second floor of the warehouse. The sconces that lined the walls were actually metal forearms holding torches lit with witchfire, which cast flickering shadows of things that were not there. The disembodied arms reminded me of the silvery clockwork limb that Boss Marz's goon, Nach, sported after he lost his flesh-and-blood one to Lukas. Not a good memory.
At the end of the corridor Gus opened a door to reveal a large room with high ceilings and windows that looked onto a blank wall. The only thing that was in the room besides my equipment was a workbench outfitted with a vise, a small anvil, and a stack of twenty-gauge copper sheeting.
"Gus will remain here and help you with the grunt work. Once you're finished, he and Bayard will take you and your equipment back home. I'll stop by in a couple of hours with some refreshments. Whatever you do, don't go wandering. I can't vouchsafe your safety outside of this room. There's a water closet over there, in case you need it." He pointed to the farthest corner of the room. "It ain't pretty, but it works."
"Don't worry. You won't have to share it with me," Gus said with a laugh. "Personally, I don't see how you can sit on one of those things. I go as nature intended-standing up." He gestured to the manure catcher cinched under the horse's tail growing from the base of his spine.
The only way for me to erase that visual was to get to work, so I began setting up my tools and cutting the copper sheets to the dimensions required in the plans. According to the blueprints, the thing I was building was comprised of three individual components, identified as "the head," "the body," and "the feet."
While it was hard and dirty work, thanks to Gus taking care of the purely physical tasks, such as lifting the cumbersome copper sheeting, it moved along far faster than I would have thought possible. By the time Quid returned with my lunch, I had finished with the cutting and was ready to start piecing the individual sections together. After the chaos and confusion of the previous night, it felt good to work with my hands and tackle a problem that could be solved with nothing more than the proper tools and the right amount of solder.
With nothing to distract me, I threw myself into the work. When Quid returned, this time with dinner, I had finished work on the three separate components and was ready for the final assembly. Using a block and tackle, Gus lifted the body and dropped it down onto the legs as if hoisting a pinata for a child's birthday party. The final third proved a little bit trickier, as it required me to climb a ladder in order to join the head to the body.
When I was finished, the thing I had labored all day to build stood seven feet high and five feet wide, balanced on three sturdy legs, and had a long, tapered neck and a turnip-shaped lower body, with a hatch big enough for a grown man to wiggle through. With such uniquely Kymeran flourishes as the dragon-headed flue atop the neck and the tripod legs ending in lion's feet, it looked more like the world's most ornate hillbilly still than a piece of magical apparatus. But if that was what the client wanted, who was I to argue? Besides, it possessed a goofy charm I found endearing. More important, my debt to Quid was now discharged-until the next time I required his unique services.
It was well after midnight by the time I packed up my gear to return home. While trailing behind Gus kng div as he lugged my welding equipment downstairs, I noticed a door across the hall standing slightly ajar. As I walked by, I heard what sounded like clucking on the other side. Despite Quid's earlier warning, I couldn't resist sneaking a peek.
I eased the door open enough to look around the jamb, and saw a real estate developer's wet dream: a huge industrial loft with exposed beams, aged brick walls, and a large skylight. At first glance the room looked like a larger version of Hexe's office, right down to the ubiquitous stuffed crocodile hanging from the rafters.
The source of the clucking noise proved to be a plump little black hen sitting in a nesting box inside a cage atop a table just inside the door; she regarded me with an inquisitive tilt of her head. I smiled and whispered to myself: " 'Hickety-Pickety, my black hen, she lays eggs for gentlemen. . . .'"
The smile slipped from my face as my gaze traveled to the metal table positioned under the skylight. Atop it lay a male cadaver, its flesh as pale as tallow, staring with sightless eyes at the distant stars above. I quickly jerked my head out of the room and hurried after Gus, my heart beating like a hummingbird's wings.
By the time I got home, Hexe was asleep in bed, an open book resting on his chest. As I gently picked it up and placed it on the nightstand, I could see it was hand-bound in leather and printed in Kymeran. Beyond that, I had no way of telling if it was a grimoire of ancient lore or a bodice ripper.
I stripped out of my clothes and slipped into the shower to rid my skin of copper residue. As I crawled into bed, Hexe rolled over and gave me a sleepy smile, wrapping his arms around my waist.
"I missed you," he murmured as he nuzzled my neck.
"I missed you, too," I replied, snuggling in close to his warm, naked body. "How was your day?"
"Busy. I had a steady stream of clients after you left. Most of them were pretty banged up. I also had to fend off several different reporters wanting to interview me about the riot. You're lucky you missed it. How about you?"
"My debt is paid in full," I assured him. I was tempted to tell him about what I had seen in the loft, but my pact with Quid was "no questions asked and no stories told." If I wanted to be accepted by Kymeran society, I had to abide by its rules. Still, as I drifted off to sleep, safely wrapped in Hexe's arms, I could not help but wonder if the pact I'd made with Quid might not come back to bite me on the ass.