“On their way with the barrows.”
“You don’t have a barrow?” he snapped.
“Like I said, they are on their way.”
“I’ll let you in when they arrive,” he said. The door started to close but I jammed my foot in the gap.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” I said. “I need to get started. Get the paperwork signed off.”
The shadowed face creased into bafflement.
“Paperwork?” he parroted scornfully. “What paperwork? You’re a garbage hauler! You come in with a barrow, you cart out the crap and you leave. There’s no paperwork!”
“Basic commodity exchange practice,” I said blandly, easing into my role. “Your trash for my labor, signed and quantified according to pre-agreed upon terms as set down in certified contractual documents like these which, conveniently enough, I have here for your perusal.”
I gave him a suitably bureaucratic smile and produced a sheaf of closely worded papers.
He opened the door another inch so he could give the paper a disbelieving stare.
“What the hell is that?” he muttered, his eyes wide and anxious.
I pushed them into the light of his lamp, confident that his being able to see them better would not ease his mind. His gaze wandered vaguely around the documents, an unfocused and random movement which made my heart sing a little song of joy. He couldn’t read.
“There’s been some sort of mistake,” he mumbled, his eyes still blank. “This isn’t how things are done. You come in, you cart away the crap, you get paid. No papers, no signing.”
He pushed the documents back toward me, but I tutted smugly and shook my head.
“No can do,” I said. “See?” I added, flipping the pages at random and pointing to a numbered paragraph, “according to the terms of this subsection all traffic between the parties of the first and second part must accord with all printed citation, vis-à-vis said contractual agreement, and be ratified by signatures at the moment of transactional completion. More than my job’s worth to forego the legal niceties. Let me in and we’ll find a nice light spot to go over the terms and, assuming you are in agreement…”
“I can’t do this,” he said.
It wasn’t defiance so much as panic. He was out of his depth and knew it, but he was also worried. I played a new card.
“Perhaps if you consult with Mr. Raines…”
As soon as I said the name, the door man blinked and his already mounting anxiety ratcheted up a notch like a spurred horse. He licked his lips and his eyes flashed about. Another minute and he’d be sweating, despite the cool morning air.
“No!” he sputtered. “Mr. Raines said he wasn’t to be roused till seven. You were going to come, and I was going to help, and he was to be left out of it completely.”
He said it like a child reciting something learned by heart, like he was reminding himself.
And there it was. Mithos and the rest had been right. We were being set up, and this poor dolt at the door was Raines’s fall guy. If the Empire weren’t already there, they’d be arriving any moment. I needed to be elsewhere and quickly, but there was—maddeningly—something I had to do.
“Just initial each page,” I said, “and I’ll load up your ash.”
“Initial?” he said stupidly.
“First letters of your name, or whatever mark you use in place of a signature.”
“Can’t you just take the ash and go?” he wheedled.
“The moment this is done,” I said, forcing a smile.
I could feel the minutes ticking away, could practically hear the regular stomp of marching sentries coming toward us, but I pushed my impatience down and tried to look casual. He was sweating hard now, and his furtive glances around were getting more frequent and more worried. I didn’t know what Raines had told him, but he knew he was sliding toward trouble with each passing second, even if the worst he could imagine was a furious boss kicking him out of his job.
Trust me, I wanted to say, it is far worse than you know.
So, he squinted at the papers he couldn’t read and, with my careful prompting, painstakingly scratched his little ham fisted cross, tongue poking out between his teeth in concentration, on the first page, then the second, then the third…
Suddenly he glanced backward into the darkness of the shop.
“What was that?” he said, more to himself than to me.
“Let’s just get this done, shall we?” I said.
He hesitated, listening, his eyes focused on nothing, then shrugged and turned back to me.
“Every sheet?” he muttered pleadingly.
“Front and back,” I said.
When it was finally done, he pushed the door wide.
“Now can you please just get it and go?” he begged.
“My colleague with the barrow hasn’t arrived…” I stalled.
“You can borrow one of ours,” he snapped. “Over there. That’s vat four at the end. Just load it up and get out. Here.”
He thrust a dusty shovel into my hands.
“All right,” I said. “No need to be rude.”
“You don’t know Raines,” he shot back, his guard dropping. “If this doesn’t get done just how he said…”
“What?” I asked.
“He’ll…” But he didn’t want to say. “He’s just not a man you want disappointed, all right?”
I gave him a careless shrug and turned to the ash vats.
It was smoky and hot inside, the forge lit by a handful of oil lamps which gave the place an amber cast with pockets of deep shadow. The dog didn’t want to go in, and I couldn’t really blame him, but we had no choice.
I gave the leash a tug, and he made a chuff of protest but followed me in. The door keeper eyed the animal warily, keeping his distance. Inside was a huge leather bellows, studded with brass and worked by a hand crank. Anvils of various sizes littered the flagged shop floor and the walls hung with pincers and hammers of every imaginable size. The soot-stained walls were stone, presumably to reduce the risk of fire, and it was clear how well they insulated the place. I could feel the inside of my nostrils scorching. I breathed through my mouth and could taste the ash on the air, a fine, bitter powder. I turned aside to cough and spat on the ground.
“Quicker you get done, the quicker you can get outside in the air,” said the doorman without sympathy. “Vat four.”
“I know,” I shot back, my annoyance real.
“There was supposed to be a team of you,” he said shoving the oversized wheelbarrow into my midriff. “If you don’t finish on time, Mister Raines will be…”
“Disappointed,” I finished for him. “Yeah, you said.”
“I have to get the fire going,” he said. “Yell when you’re done.”
And he disappeared behind the forge, glad to have better things to do.
I looped the leash over the horn of an anvil and climbed down into the vat. The dog watched me but did not object, though it sniffed the air uneasily. The ash looked pale and gray, but I could feel the heat of it on my face. I spat again, my throat beginning to burn, then thrust the shovel in and began to spade the hot fine powder into the barrow.
It was miserable work. Each stab of the shovel raised a stinging ash cloud that clung to my sweating face and hands. Somehow my labor didn’t seem to reduce the ash heap at all, and what I had thought would take no more than a couple of minutes had started to feel like it would take most of the morning.
“You not done yet?”
I turned and saw Garnet with a barrow and shovel of his own, the red-faced door keeper showing him in, fidgety and anxious as before.
“What kept you?” I demanded as Garnet patted the dog’s head absently, then dropped into the vat beside me in a cloud of ash.
“Here now, aren’t I?” said Garnet. “This is all you’ve done?”