Necessity's Child (Liaden Universe®) (7 page)

And that was well.

That was very well, indeed.

* * *

“Here, now, you little thief, come back here!”

The shopkeeper who yelled it was a red-faced man with freckles and a dirty apron. His legs were long and there was no possibility that she could outrun him.

Kezzi, therefore, fell to her knees, clutched Malda to her and began to loudly lament.

“No! No! He’s my dog! You can’t have him!”

The shopkeeper came to a halt, a look of confusion on his foolish
gadje
face.

“What the—” he began, as another man came forward. Kezzi saw him out of the corner of her eye—a brown man with big shoulders, and a gun belted on his hip.

“Hey, now, neighbor, leave the kid’s dog alone, right?”

“Dog?” The red-faced man blinked and turned. “
Dog
?” he repeated. “I’m not after her damn dog—ain’t even enough of it to make a decent stew! She stole a—”

“Easy,” the brown man interrupted, putting a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Go on inside and make sure the neighbors don’t walk off with the store.”

“But she—”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll come in in a few and make it right with you. Just want to have a word or two with the younger here, first. I don’t show up, you call in one of the patrol and tell ’em to write down that Golden stiffed you. Got that name?”

“Golden,” the red-faced man repeated. “Dorrie Golden’s grandson?”

“That’s me.”

The red-faced man shook his head. “You ain’t gonna stiff me,” he said, and walked away without saying anything else.

During this exchange, Kezzi had kept up her end of things, clutching Malda—to whom the part of patient victim was nothing new—and weeping desperately into his fur.

“Okay.” The man named Golden hunkered down next to her. “He’s gone. Nobody’s gonna take your dog.”

Sniffling, Kezzi raised her head. “Nobody?” she asked, suspiciously.

“Let’s just say they’ll have to get through me, first,” Golden said, brown eyes smiling.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Anna.”

“Pleased to meetcha, Anna,” he said politely. “I’m Mike Golden. What’s your dog’s name?”

“Rascal,” she answered promptly.

“Glad to meet Rascal, too. Now, c’mon, stand up.” He did, and held his hand down to her.

Kezzi knew better than to let one of Those Others get a hand on her. She came to her feet fast, and went three steps back, not quite beyond Mike Golden’s reach, which was long. He didn’t look too fast, though, with his short legs, his big shoulders, and heavy bones. Kezzi thought she could outrun him.

“Where’s your ma?” the man asked her.

Kezzi pointed vaguely northward. “Home.”

Mike Golden nodded. “That bein’ the case, and it comin’ on to evenin’, how about I walk you and Rascal home?”

Kezzi shook her head. “I know the way,” she said, and added, for the smile in his eyes. “Good-bye, Mike Golden.”

She snapped her fingers for Malda, spun and took off at the top of her speed, dodging between the
gadje
who crowded the sidewalk.

She ran as fast as she could, head down, expecting to hear the man’s voice raised behind her, shouting out for somebody to
catch that girl!

But that didn’t happen. Kezzi ran, Malda at her heel, and there was no outcry, and no one moved to stop them.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was a merry group around Jin’s hearth—Kezzi, Isart, and Droi, who had all contributed food—Silain, of course, and also Memit, Kar, and Gahn, who brought fiddle, sistreen and drum and earned their suppers with song.

Isart’s contribution had been a piece of salt meat, which Jin had slivered and fried with the flapjacks she’d made from the flour Kezzi had contributed.

Kezzi thought the meat too strong, and fed hers to Malda. Droi saw, and slipped her another flapjack, dredged in the dusty sugar that she had brought back from the City Above.

Tea had been poured and the musicians were picking up their instruments again, when there came a pounding of feet across the common, and here was Vylet, gasping for the
luthia
to come to her own hearth at once!

Silain looked up from her tea, her silver hair moving along her shoulders like rain.

“What desperate need is this?”

“Udari found a dead
gadje
by the eight door,” gasped Vylet, “and brought him inside.”

“If the
gadje
is dead, he is beyond us all,” said Silain, unmoving.

Kezzi, though, put down her mug, remembering the brown man with the smiling eyes, there Above, who had not called out to Those Others his brothers to catch her. Had he followed her after all on his short, bandy legs? The streets Above were dangerous; sometimes even the Bedel were caught—

“Your pardon,
luthia
,” Vylet gasped. “The
gadje
has a number of breaths left in him. Udari thinks—five.”

Udari had only a little of the farsight. But, if he said that five breaths remained to the
gadje
, absent the
luthia
’s blessing, then likely he was right.

Silain rose speedily, and Kezzi, too, without being asked.

“I will come,” said Jin. “If you wish.”

“Yes,” said the
luthia
, and so it was the three of them came to where the
gadje
lay, while Vylet ran for the headman.

* * *

It was not Mike Golden, rumpled and sticky with blood, on a blanket at the
luthia
’s hearth. At first glance, Kezzi thought the
gadje
a boy, then Jin sponged the blood from his face and she saw that, however small, this was a man grown.

A man grown, but surely dying, his fires low and all but colorless. Even Kezzi could see that much.

“He is broken in many places,” the
luthia
breathed, fingering the
gadje
’s dying glow. “Inside more than out.”

“Perhaps it is best to smooth the road,” Jin said, “and give that which is left to the furnace.”

To smooth the road to the World Unseen—that was the
luthia
’s most potent blessing. Surely, in such a case as this, it was the only good thing that could be done. Kezzi blinked and altered her breathing to that special rhythm she had so recently dreamed, bringing what she had learned about such matters to the top of her mind.

Kneeling on the far side of the
luthia
’s fire, Udari watched with his great dark eyes, but said nothing.

“Wait . . .” the
luthia
murmured, her fingers stroking the cooling fires. They paused at the center of the battered forehead, described a sign.

For an instant, Kezzi saw it—an orb divided against itself, as if the
gadje
’s soul had been sundered, half from half.

The
luthia
breathed in, and sat back on her heels.

“We will do what may be done,” she said, meeting Udari’s eyes across the fire. “Kezzi, bring my bag.”

* * *

The new street policy put into play by the Consolidated Bosses of Surebleak said that, if the hospital field unit came up with somebody hurt in ways that seemed to be consistent with violence, they were to call the Street Patrol. The Patrol was to relay the call to the office of the appropriate Boss, where whoever was on comm would pass it to the ’hand on watch, who would either note it, or act on it.

It was, Mike Golden admitted, more likely that such calls would be noted than acted on, given everything else that was prolly going on at the exact same minute. Boss Nova wasn’t one to let any snow drift around
her
. Or her ’hands. And, the Consolidated Bosses—or, say, at least Boss Conrad—weren’t no dummies. There was a safety net built into the system. The Patrol
had
to send one of theirs ’round to the hospital to have a look an’ a chat. If the Patroller found something interesting, then another call would get made to the Boss.

That second call always got an answer from the Boss’s household—a high level answer, too, ever since the big thinkers decided to make their lives smooth and easy by retiring the Road Boss’s wife. His pregnant wife.

Yeah, Mike thought, some people were too stupid to come in outta the snow.

All that being so, he was in the kitchen, grabbing a cup of coffee and a cookie by way of soothing his hurt feelings, when Ali come in with the message.

“Three repeaters at clinic,” she said. “One cut bad, one smashed nose, one broke finger.”

Mike shrugged and took a bite of his cookie.

“Come in from the warehouse side,” she added.

Oh, had they?

He gave Ali a nod, that being the best he could do with a mouthful of cookie, and she took herself back to the comm.

Him, he sipped his hot coffee with respect and had a minute’s quiet thought.

It happened the Bosses were thinking to expand into the company warehouses, which’d been standing empty, absent the odd metal-miner, since the Company’d gone off and left their hired help to fend for themselves while the Company mined timonium in some other, less chilly locale.

Given the realities of Surebleak, you’da thought the warehouses would’ve been taken down to a few splinters of steel by this time, but—funny thing. They weren’t. Peculiar things went on up in the warehouses; folks disappeared, or fell down so hard their brains got shook and they didn’t remember quite where they’d got turned around. Didn’t take much of that before the warehouses came to be avoided.

And that’d been okay, under the old ways of doin’ things.

Under the new way, though . . .

Mike sighed.

If there was something with teeth living in the warehouses, best to know it before the Bosses sent in the work crews.

’Nother thing, too, while he was thinkin’.

The girl with the dog—Anna, if he was to believe her, which he didn’t particularly—she’d pointed off north when he’d asked her where home was.

But she’d run away
east
.

Toward the warehouse district.

Mike finished his coffee and stood there in the corner of the kitchen, staring hard at nothing much.

Three bad acts coming in all banged up from outta the warehouses? One little girl an’ her little dog weren’t gonna be responsible for that.

Were they?

Only one way to find out, like his grandma used to say. And who knew? The repeaters might’ve noticed something useful.

Mike rinsed his cup and put it into the sink to be washed.

Then he went to tell Ali to call the clinic and let ’em know he was on his way over.

* * *

The Patroller was a short, slight woman with snow-blue eyes who talked off-world Terran with an accent like Boss Nova’s. One of the Scouts of which they suddenly had a surplus, he figured, and gave her a nod. “Mike Golden, Boss Nova’s office.”

“Isphet bar’Obin,” she answered. “Blair Road Patrol.” She showed him the card signed by Tommy Tilden, Blair’s Boss Patroller, and he nodded.

“You talk to these yoyos yet?”

“I thought it best to wait,” she said, “as the Boss has an interest.”

The Boss only had what he’d left her on the house noteboard, but that wasn’t something Patroller bar’Obin needed to know.

“Let’s see what they know, then,” he said, and led the way down the short hall to the patch-up room.

There were three streeters in the big room, each at their own station; each being tended by a med tech. There were three clinic security posted at points around the occupied stations, guns and annoyance showing.

The streeters were sadly familiar: Hank Regis, with his right hand in a splint; Mort Almonte, with his nose at a funny angle; and Danny Ringrose, swearing and sweating while the tech took stitches up a long, deep cut in his arm. By rights, there should’ve been two more, but maybe Parfil and Dwight had gotten lucky.

Mike sighed and headed for Hank, not because he was the brightest—that’d be Danny—or the most talkative—that was Mort—but because he was the one most able to be informative at this particular point in time.

“Hey, Goldie. How’s the tame streeter?”

“Healthier than you are, seems like,” Mike returned, stopping a few steps short of the gurney where Hank sat, legs swinging. Mike crossed his arms over his chest.

“Yeah, well, sometimes there’s accidents,” Hank said. “Got any smoke, Goldie?”

“Sorry.”

Hank shrugged. “Never was much use.”

Mike felt Patroller bar’Obin shift at his side, but she didn’t say anything, which made her brighter than Hank. On the other hand, who wasn’t?

“So, what happened to your hand?”

“Broke the thumb. Damnedest thing—sure been a lesson to me.”

Right.

“How’d you happen to break it?”

“Banged it against something harder than it was. Want I should show you?”

“That’s okay.” He jerked his head toward Mort. “How ’bout your pard, there?”

Hank snickered. “Ran into a pot.”

Mort turned his head carefully and gave the three of them a glare, but didn’t say anything.

“A pot?” Mike asked.

“S’right, a pot. Did a sight o’damage, that pot, but we got it settled at the end.”

“Shut up, Hank.” That was Danny, his voice stretched and angry.

Mike moved over to his station, leaving Hank to the Patroller, and peered over the med tech’s shoulder.

“That’s a nasty slice,” he commented.

“Cut m’self shaving,” Danny snarled. “What’s up with you, Goldie?”

“Just payin’ a social call. Heard you come in from the warehouses. Bosses are gonna be renovatin’ there, real soon. If there’s teeth—or pots—that need flushin’ out first, it’d be good to know.” He thought for a second, then added, “Reward for information.”

The tech did something that made Danny hiss and swear, arm jerking against the webbing that held it taut.

“Stop that!” the tech snapped. “You stay still or I’ll knock you out!”

“I’ll stay still,” Danny said through clenched teeth. “Get on with it, woman.”

“Think I’m darning a sock?” she said, bending to her task again.

“So,” Mike insisted, drawing Danny’s attention back to him, “what’s up there to look out for, Danny?”

The other man bared his teeth. “Nothing, now. We took care of ’im for ya, Goldie. Mean little sumbitch. Still breathin’ when we left him, but I’m betting that didn’t last long.”