"You've been out almost a month," said Glover. "I was beginning to get anxious. Any luck?"
"None." The pack had contained a mass of corbinite; thirty pounds of near-pure crystal worth a half-dozen High Passages together with gear costing most of what he owned. "In the Drell, you say?"
"What? Oh, the boy." Glover sucked in his cheeks as he reached for a bottle. "Join me? No? Well, here's to success." He emptied the glass at a swallow, the reek of crudely distilled spirit tainting the air as he refilled it. "The nearest thing to Lowtown you'll find on Shard. Once it was Lowtown but then the company pulled out and things evened out a little. The poor stayed poor but the top rich got up and went. So what was left was up for grabs." He drank again. "If it hadn't been for my busted foot I'd have gone too. A good job," he said bitterly. "That's what they told me. A good, responsible position. Hell, look at it! Even a Hausi couldn't make a living in this dump!"
A lie-but a Hausi wouldn't have drunk his profits, let his wares rot for lack of attention or wallowed in self-pity.
Dumarest said, patiently, "Where in the Drell?"
"You still on about that boy?" Glover shook his head. "A dumb kid-what's he to you? Have a drink and forget him." He reached for the bottle, halted its movement as he met Dumarest's eyes. "Fivelane," he said. "Number eighteen."
Once it had been smart with clean paint and windows clean and unpatched with paper and sacking. A home with dignity for people with pride. Now it held smells and decay and a slut who stared at Dumarest with calculating eyes.
"Anton," she said. "What do you want with him?" Her expression became speculative. "If you're thinking of-"
"Are you his mother?"
"In a way. His true mother's ill. I can take care of things." She sucked in her breath as Dumarest closed his fingers around her arm. "All right, mister! No harm done! She's upstairs!"
Dumarest found the woman in a room with a narrow window half-blocked with rags against the cold of night. There was a truckle bed, a table, a chair, a box, a heap of assorted fabrics piled in an opposite corner. A jupon of frayed scarlet cloth lay on the lap of a woman who had once been young and could have been beautiful. She coughed and sucked in air to cough again with a betraying liquidity.
"Anton's a good boy," she said. "He does what he can. He wouldn't hurt anyone."
Dumarest was patient. "I mean him no harm. I just want to know about him. Was he born a mute?"
"A genetic defect but it can be corrected. A new larynx-" Her hands closed on the faded scarlet of the patched jupon. "All it needs is money."
The cure for so many ills. Dumarest noted the thinness of the hands, the lankness of the hair. She had met his eyes only at their first meeting, dropping her own as if ashamed, pretending to be engrossed in her sewing. From below came a sudden shout, a slap, a following scream.
"Martia," she said. "Her man has little patience."
"And yours?"
"Dead." Her voice was as dull as her eyes. "Over a year ago now. An accident."
"At work?"
"In the brush. A friend brought the news." She didn't want to talk about it and Dumarest watched the movement of her hands on the jupon. A spare-the garment was edged with gold instead of silver. Anton had not yet returned home. "What do you want, mister?"
"I'm looking for someone. A man named Kelly. He could have been a friend of your husband. Anton might know him. Does he?"
She was silent a moment then she shook her head. "Think," urged Dumarest. "Your man could have mentioned him. Anton-you can communicate?" He continued as she nodded. "Kelly could have befriended the boy. Jarl too. You know Jarl?"
"No."
Her denial came too fast, perhaps simply an automatic defense. In such places as the Drell strangers were always objects of suspicion and it would be natural for her to protect the boy. "A pity." Dumarest was casual. "There could be money in it. I want to get my business done and be on my way. Did your man have a favorite place? Who brought you the news of his death?"
The question was asked without change of tone and she answered with unthinking response. "Fenton. Boyle Fenton. He owns the Barracoon. It's on the corner of Tenlane and Three." She added, "He's a good man."
He had softened the bad news, given her a little money, promised aid if she should need it, a promise she could have been too proud to ask him to keep.
Had the boy been willing bait?
It was possible and he fit the part; young, weak, helpless, unable to do more than jangle his bells, a decoy to disarm the suspicious, placed by the predators who had been willing to kill for what loot they could find. Or had they merely taken advantage of a genuine accident?
"Does Anton go out often?"
"Every day."
"Into the brush? Alone?"
"He's used to it. He collects what he can and sells it for what he can get." Pride in her son lifted the woman's head, a ray of sunlight touching her hair and lending it a transient beauty, echoed in the bones of cheek and jaw, the arched brows over the sunken eyes. The fever staining her cheeks gave her a false appearance of health. "He's a good boy, mister!"
The boy was small and frail and unable to speak yet wise in the dangers of the brush. It had not been an accident, then, but even so he was not wholly to be blamed. Those who had used him carried the guilt.
Downstairs the woman who had greeted him was waiting in the doorway.
"Any luck, mister?" Her eyes moved toward the upper regions. One was dark with a fresh bruise and weals marked the shallow cheek. "If you really want the boy I could arrange it."
Dumarest said, "Is there a hospital here?"
"An infirmary at the Rotunda but they want paying in advance." Her eyes moved over his face to settle on the dried blood marking his lacerated scalp. "For her or yourself? If it's for her then forget it-she won't last another season. If it's for you then why waste money? The monks will treat you for free."
It had been a hard day and Brother Pandion was tired. He rested his shoulders against the sun-warmed brick of the building used as a church and looked at the line which never seemed to end. Many of the faces were familiar; but all were suppliants coming to gain the comfort of confession. They would kneel before the benediction light to ease their guilt, then to suffer subjective penance and, after, to receive the Bread of Forgiveness. And if many came only to get the wafer of concentrates it was a fair exchange-for all who knelt to be hypnotized beneath the swirling glow of the light were conditioned against killing a fellow man.
A fair exchange, but how many would need to be so conditioned before all could walk safely and in peace? Pandion knew the answer, as did all dedicated to serve the Church of Universal Brotherhood, but knowing it did not lessen his resolve. Once all could look at their fellows and recognize the truth of the credo-there, but for the grace of God, go I!-the millennium would have arrived.
He would never live to see it as would no monk now living. Men traveled too far and bred too fast yet each person touched by the church lessened pain and anguish by just that amount. Each who saw in another the reflection of what he might have been was a step upward from barbarism and savagery. A life spent in that pursuit was a life well-spent.
He straightened as Dumarest approached, the brown homespun robe shielding the angular lines of his body. Even as a youth he had never been plump and now years of privation had drawn skin taut over bone and shrinking muscle. But the privation had been chosen and was not a duty, for the church did not believe in the virtue of pain or the benefit of suffering, yet how could he indulge himself while so many remained unfed?