“Your money guy, was he in some kind of uniform?”
“No. No, but he looked like he could have filled a suit, you know. Like he’d be comfortable in uniform.” His eyes found mine. “Kinda like you.”
“Like me. And did he…” I stopped. There were footsteps on the stairs. They stopped outside my door. I whispered. “You expecting backup?”
Pedr’s eyes were wide. He shook his head and squirmed up over the bed, standing up with his back against the far wall.
“Stay quiet.” I stood by the door, behind it. Whoever was in the hall had stopped moving. I could hear him breathing. He had heard us talking, no question. He turned and started down the stairs, fast. When he was gone I turned back to Pedr.
“I’m about to throw you out there, man. With whoever that was. Sure there’s nothing else you want to tell me?”
He blanched, but shook his head.
“Okay, well. Go get the hell out. And if you ever take money from someone who isn’t the boss, to break into my place or follow me or anything. Well.” I walked over and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m not going to do a damn thing. But I’m going to tell Valentine that he’s got rats in the walls, and we’ll just see what he does.”
“Sure,” he said. “Sure thing, Jake.”
“Sure thing. Now go.”
He left fast, scooping up the money from my bed as he went. I listened to him clatter down the stairs. I hadn’t gotten all the answers I wanted, but there was only so much he’d know. People like Pedr make a living out of not knowing, not seeing; just take the money, do the job, forget about it. I understood. I finished dressing, tucked the Glory revolver into my shoulder harness and went out.
They found me on the Pauper’s Bridge, two of them. There was a third, up ahead, who tagged me when I tried to run. They were Valentine’s boys, people I knew. They didn’t act too familiar.
Coming out of my building, I looked up at a clear morning sky. The storm had finally passed, and the zepdocks were busy. Had one of the ships gliding above me carried word from the Heights, or was it still storming at the higher elevations? Couldn’t tell from here. I was still thinking about that when I made my tail, shortly after I joined the traffic on the Pauper’s. Big guy in an old suit, too formal for morning traffic, but the suit was too ratty to mark him as money. An affectation. I hated strong boys who played dress up. I made the second guy five steps later, loitering not ten feet behind the first. Playing too close. Wanted to be seen, maybe. He was in the same get up, black vest suit that was going gray at the cuffs, too many watch chains and monocle clasps.
The Orrey boys. Following me, acting like they didn’t see me ten feet away, when I had dinner with them the day before my little trip downfalls. Imagine that.
Thing is, the boys had chosen their spot well. Pauper’s is just a big bridge, despite all the shops and cartstands along the way. No alleys to duck down, no sideroads to loop through. One way in, one way out, and a fifty foot drop into the Ebd river below. The whole place groaned underfoot; a tangle of chains and wooden arches kept the place up. It wasn’t safe, but it wasn’t going to fall down today. There were crowds, but the boys weren’t trying to stay hidden at all, so there was no way I was going to get enough people between us to lose them.
I took the only out I had. I ran. I put my elbows into the crowd and crawled my way through. The boys stayed on me, not hurrying up. They spread out, in case I tried to double back, but they didn’t try to keep up. Still didn’t look at me, either. It was like they didn’t care if they lost me once I got to the end of the bridge.
I looked forward, forgetting the boys. If they didn’t care what happened once I got off the bridge, it could only mean that I wasn’t getting off the bridge. I saw the trap, a guy in front, waiting. Not someone I knew. He wasn’t as big, but his coat fell unnaturally over his shoulders. I drifted right and he drifted with me, like he was a kite on a string. He was going a little slower than me, getting closer with each step. I slowed down hard, nearly stopping. The guy behind me stumbled into my back, fell on his ass. Whatever the guy had been carrying, a bag or basket of fruit, scattered and rolled in oblong patterns down the cobbles. He was swearing as he stood, but the tail to my front was having similar problems. An old lady had dropped a jar of coffee and was yelling at the tough’s unturned back. I shot forward and to the side, my fingers brushing the pistol in my coat as I passed him. I risked a look over. Under his coat there was a lot of metal and the tiny whirling dance of gears and flywheels. He looked up at me, unconcerned, his eyes dead stone pits. I pushed hard on the crowd and broke into a lull in the traffic, an open courtyard between rivers of pedestrians. I dashed across, squeezed between a sausage vendor and a closed stall and got off the bridge.
Fourth guy. He put a hand on my chest, the palm wide, his other arm hidden behind him. He looked me right in the eye and smiled.
“Burn. Where you headed?” He said. It was Cacher. Friend of Emily. Good friend.
“I don’t know, Cacher.” I looked back to see the Orrey boys and the metal guy amble up. “Where am I headed?”
It wasn’t one of the quayside warehouses, so that was okay. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t that bad. The third guy kept really close, his eyes dead. Other than Valentine, this guy was the most metal I’d ever seen. His face was a steel plate, the eyes pitted ball bearings that looked like river stones. However he saw, it wasn’t the way I did. Just his jaw and teeth were original issue. When his coat flipped aside there was more, a plain of tiny gears spinning through their cycles. Most of it was probably just for show, but I made a note to never gut-punch this guy. Probably lose my knuckles in the grind. He kept those dead eyes on me.
The others were real casual, like we were buddies out for a walk. Hell, we were buddies, of a sort. I didn’t always like to be around Cacher when Emily was in the room, but we all got along well enough.
“Boss could have just arranged a meeting,” I said. “My appointment book is open.”
“I figure he just did, Burn,” Cacher said. He grinned. His teeth were lined in black gunk, drippings from the cassiopia he had tucked into his cheek. “An urgent meeting, I figure.”
“Fair enough. Still.” I shrugged. They had taken my gun, chuckled as they read the inscription on the service piece. “Coulda been more direct about it. You make me feel like I did something.”
“Well,” Cacher sighed. “Well, we’ll see. We’ll let the boss talk that out for you.”
“Sure.”
I was still on edge from last night, tired and wired and itchy to find Emily and that damned Cog. That could be it, though. Em could have gotten the Cog to Valentine, and maybe Valentine wanted to talk about it. Maybe. Not sure why that warranted an armed escort, though.
They led me to a quiet street on the River Road, the wooden sidewalk under our feet echoing hollowly. We stopped at a house, literally just stopped. Cacher and the other boys leaned against the yard post and lost interest in me. The street crowd was lean, just businessmen who didn’t have to keep a clock, going off to work on their own time. The house was nice, a neat little breadbox place with clean paint and windows that looked into a tidy sitting room. It could have been situated on the country road to Toth, rather than crowded up against a dozen rowhouses, blocks from the river Reine. I saw someone move, just a flicker behind the curtains and then the room was empty again. I looked around at Cacher.
“I’m supposed to go in?”
He ignored me. I went in. The inside of the house was just as neat and clean as the outside. The wooden floors hardly creaked, the heirloom furniture was polished, and the upholstery was so sharp and uniform that it looked uncomfortable. I poked my head into the sitting room. It was empty, but I could see out the window, see Cacher and his crew still standing around.
Back in the hallway there was still no sign of Valentine. There were two more rooms off the hallway, and a staircase. A final door at the far end of the hall, not twenty feet away, probably led to an alley entrance. I could see from here that the bolt was off, and the door unlocked. I was walking down the hall before I realized it, deciding to run before even thinking about it. The first room I passed, to my right, was a kitchen. No lights, and no Valentine. I thought I heard something upstairs, the barest whisper of movement as I passed the stairs. There was a door at the top of the stairs, a bright light shining around the cracks where the door didn’t sit properly in the jamb.