Hayes moved among them all like a ghost, weaving through the weak points of the crowds. He was riding a mean drunk and he had forgotten his coat somewhere and his scarf was stuffed down the front of his shirt, which was only half-buttoned. He tried to keep his senses about him. Dockland was probably the most treacherous part of Evesden except for some sections of Construct, where hobos and vagrants had holed up in the half-finished sites and lived in medieval savagery. He was familiar with Dockland, though, and its denizens were familiar with him.
Magic, he thought to himself as he walked. They need the old magic back in action, wheeling and dealing. Like always.
He knew he shouldn’t feel angry at Evans. He wasn’t the one who’d given the order to cut him off. The board, yes. Brightly, yes. But still, they had no issue dumping him off at the drop of a hat, and no issue calling him back just the same.
He shouldn’t have come back. He should have just cut tether and run. He’d done it before. He’d done it overseas, in worse conditions than this. He was a consummate survivor. He could wander anywhere and find a future, should he want to.
Hayes scratched at his arm and realized he was shivering again. His nerves jangled with the needling tension that always took him at this hour. Cho Lun’s Carpentry was only a block away but here in this loud, chattering chaos it seemed miles. He picked up his pace and skipped through a gap in the groups of people. As he did someone shouted, “Princeling! Hey, Princeling! Princeling’s here!” but he did not respond.
He reached into his pocket to touch his savings. It was more of a wad of small bills, kept together by his sweat. He wondered how much time that would buy him. An hour. Maybe less. When he had first started coming to the dens he had bought out booths for the entire night, sprawled out on the cushions and teasing the girls for favors. Now it was utilitarian. Medicinal. He came to get his regular dose, and then he could make it through the next day.
He counted his cash again. It wasn’t enough. Not for what he needed.
Hayes scanned the crowd and wandered for a bit before he found what he was looking for. In front of a closed warehouse a group of youths had set up a table game, the usual find-the-jack switch. They weren’t working in shifts, which was lucky. Just one frontman and the rest of the gang organizing. It would be far easier to get a bead on things that way.
Hayes took up a station just down the alley from them and leaned up against the brick wall and waited. He listened to the leader’s chatter, to his cajoling and wheedling. Watched the movements of his hands and the blur of the cards.
Then he took a breath, let it out, and tried to pay attention.
It took about an hour for Hayes to start getting it. It helped that all the boys were watching the game at once. Soon the sensations started leaking in, the joy of the con and the careful attention of the bait and hook. Let them win a little, let them lose more. The greed burned inside Hayes and he began to hold the pattern in his mind, the way one thought and feeling segued into another, the way the night was supposed to work for these young men. It was faint and not much to work with, but Hayes didn’t have much time.
He stepped out from the shadows of the alley and got in line for the game. When he stepped up the young man grinned and said, “Up to try your luck, try and get the jack to bleed green?”
“I am indeed,” Hayes said.
“All right then, sir, let’s see the wager you’re willing to put on his crown. Hopefully your bundle’ll stay put and not topple, eh?”
“Hopefully,” he said, and put down his money.
The young man looked at it. “That’s an awful lot.”
“I’m awful lucky.”
The boy frowned, judging him. He nodded. “Fair enough.”
Hayes felt the pattern change in the boy. Change tempo and direction, almost. Hayes struggled to keep his attention and watched the cards. Lose once, win twice, and walk, he said to himself.
The boy turned the cards up, showing him the jack. Hayes barely looked. Then the boy flipped them over and began smoothly swerving them in and out, chanting quietly as they moved. Hayes anticipated the turn and felt the boys burn white-hot with anxiety. When the cards stopped moving Hayes pointed to the wrong card and the lead boy smiled and flipped it over.
The boy grinned. Already he had the gray teeth of an old man. “Sorry, sir. You’re not lucky today, it seems.”
“Imagine that,” said Hayes. “Try again?”
The boy began laying cards down again. But Hayes knew the game now. On the second try he won his money back handily. On the third he placed his money down and made a triple bet and watched the jack spin by, the boy desperately maneuvering it through the other cards. Hayes almost missed it. When they came to a stop he took out a finger, waved it along the line of cards, listening carefully. The boys watched and as his finger passed by the third card he felt a whine of fear ring out in all of them like a chorus.
Hayes tapped the card. “That one.”
The boy stared at him, then flipped it over. The jack looked up at them both. The boy leaned close and said, “What the fuck you doing here?”
“Taking my winnings.”
“What’d you do? What’d you do to the game?”
“Nothing,” said Hayes. “I just won it.”
Spectators around them started to applaud. The boy looked up and suddenly remembered himself.
“Here,” he said. “Here. Take your goddamn money and go.”
Hayes counted it carefully, then tipped an imaginary hat and walked away, the crowd still applauding. As he turned the corner a faint headache started to pound. He silently cursed himself. There had been too many people there and he had stayed far too long.
No, this was not magic, he thought to himself as he walked. He didn’t know what it was. It was just his. Brightly called it his “talent” or his “knack.” Evans preferred not to speak about it at all. And Hayes needed no word for it. It was just something that happened.
Sometimes when the wind was right and everything was still, Hayes could feel ripples running through him. Echoes from the minds of those around him. Most of the time they were deathly faint, but they were there. And sometimes he could learn things from them, or even mimic them.
It had taken him a long while to realize he could do it at all. To him it felt natural, like breathing. Like seeing patterns in mathematics and solving them, or sitting down with a pencil and knowing how to sketch a tree. It was just something his mind did without asking.
The boys at McNaughton had quizzed him about it at great length when Brightly had first hauled him in. Physicists and biologists and psychologists. Only a few, as Brightly wanted to keep any information about Hayes as restricted as possible. Hayes always told them it was like listening to music you had never heard before being played over and over again in the next room: you could hear something in the background but you weren’t really sure what it was, but if you stayed there long enough eventually you could pick out the trumpets and the bass line, and if you stayed even longer you’d be able to complete the melody in your head without trying. Pretty soon you’d be humming along.
Much of it seemed to be based on time and proximity. After five minutes Hayes could sense when people were around him, within ten or twenty feet or so. After eight he would have a pretty good idea of where they were in relation to him. After thirty minutes he would get “the pangs,” occasional flashes of how they were feeling, but unless they were having extreme emotions those were always difficult to determine. After two hours he would have a reasonably decent idea of their level of anxiety, depression, stress, or whatever else. After four he would begin to form a concept of how they felt about various things, some of them minutiae, others possibly important. And then, after spending six hours of close contact with a person with no other individuals around to interfere, Hayes could have a good sense of personality and some strong ideas about the problems that loomed particularly large in their mind, along with some habits unique to that person alone.