I was debating which patrollers I should accompany on their rounds when a patroller first hurried through the station doors. “Captain! We’ve got a problem over on Sleago!” The patroller was Yherlyt, a dark-skinned and seasoned veteran of nearly fifteen years, who was the son of Tiempran immigrants.
“Do we need reinforcements?”
“It’s not that kind of problem, sir.”
Translated loosely, they needed me, and Yherlyt didn’t want to explain in the station.
I grabbed my cloak and visored hat and hurried to join him. Outside the wind was brisk and chill. Occasional white puffy clouds scudded across a sky that might have been clear and crisp, except too many people in L’Excelsis had lit fires or stoves, and a low smoky haze hung over the city. I didn’t speak until we were headed down Fuosta toward Quierca and well away from anyone else.
“What is it?”
“A pair of elveweed runners, sir. One’s dead, and the other’s wounded. He’ll probably make it. There’s a young elver. He’s dead. There’s a woman, too. The mother of the dead elver. Her name is Ismelda. She’s cut up a bit. Maybe more than that.”
I had an idea, but I just said, “I’d like a little more detail, Yherlyt.”
“The runners came to deliver to the dead elver…or to collect. They didn’t know he was dead. The mother killed the collector with a big iron fry pan. She didn’t know he had a partner. The partner took a knife to her, but she broke his nose and jaw with the pan. He tried to run and came out of the house and dropped unconscious on the sidewalk. A pair of kids tried to drag the partner off the sidewalk, but Mhort has good eyes, and we caught them.”
“Do you know why all this happened?”
“The dead taudis-kid, the elver, couldn’t have been more than fourteen. He was still in school. I’m guessing he was a runner, too.”
“So he either stole or bought the elveweed, and smoked too much of the new stuff.”
“Yes, sir.”
When we reached the dingy narrow house, the fourth up from Quierca on Sleago, two other patrollers waited on the front porch that was barely more than a stoop under wide and sagging eaves. They had cuffed the surviving runner. His entire face was bruised and bloody, and his jaw on the left side was crooked and turning purple.
“Sir?” asked Mhort.
“Take him in. Book him for elveweed running and attempted murder. Oh…and tell Huensyn to send a wagon here for the other bodies.”
“Yes, sir.”
The runner mumbled words through his ruined face. “…Attacked us…didn’t do…nothing…tried…knife…keep her…off me….”
That was doubtless true. It didn’t make any difference. There might not be much I could do about elveweed, but I wasn’t about to have school-age boys as runners. Besides, the injured runner would live far longer as a coal loader for the Navy or as a quarry apprentice or the like.
“Off with you, sow-scum,” ordered Mhort.
He and Deksyn marched the runner down the three crumbling brick steps and then toward Quierca.
I followed Yherlyt into the small front hall where two bodies lay on their backs. One’s face was contorted in agony. That had to be the elver boy. The other figure wore a black shirt and trousers, both washed so many times that their color was closer to dark gray than to true black. His face was burned by streaks of something, and the burns hadn’t even started to heal.
In the parlor sat a dark-haired and painfully thin woman. Someone had bandaged her arms with strips of cloth, but in places, some blood had soaked through the crude dressings. She looked at me, not questioningly, but not blankly.
“I’m Patrol Captain Rhennthyl.”
She nodded.
“Why did you kill the one runner?” I asked.
“Why?” Her voice rose. “He killed my son. He gave him that weed, and Nygeo smoked it, and he died. He died horribly. You saw his face. Then that scum runner came and demanded silvers for the elveweed. He said that terrible things would happen to me and Foyneo if I didn’t pay. I have few silvers, just what I earn from helping Ielsa. She is a seamstress on the other side of Quierca. We would not eat…and he killed my boy. He took out a knife, and I threw the grease in the pan in his face and then hit him with it…”
That explained the burns on the dead runner’s face.
“Don’t take me away!” she pleaded.
Yherlyt looked to me. I understood why I was there.
“I don’t see any reason to take you anywhere,” I said. “Two elveweed runners attacked you to collect silvers that they said your son owed them. You defended yourself. Self-defense is allowed.” I paused. “We will need to take Nygeo’s body.”
“He won’t need it…” Behind the stoic words was an edge, and her eyes were bright, but her voice did not break, nor did actual tears flow.
“I’m very sorry,” I said, inclining my head to her.
She just turned away.
Yherlyt and I carried both bodies out of the dwelling and to the sidewalk.
“Thank you, sir,” he said as we lowered Nygeo’s already stiff figure to the stone.
“You’re welcome. I just did what captains are here for. Write up the report the way she said it, but mention that he had a knife when the dead runner asked for the silvers.”
“Yes, sir. That’s the way Mhort and I heard it, too.”
“Is there anything else you need me for, Yherlyt?”
“No, sir.” He paused.
“I need to tell Deyalt. They’re not supposed to be using schoolboys for runners.”
“No, sir.” After a moment, he added, “I’d not speak poorly of the dead, but Nygeo was always a problem. Foyneo is a good boy.”
“We don’t want the dealers getting any ideas.” I didn’t like having any elveweed in the taudis, but there wasn’t any way I could stop the trade. I’d had to use every tool I knew to get the taudischefs to press for the ban on selling to schoolchildren and not using schoolchildren from the taudis as runners.
I spent more than a glass on the streets. I never did find Deyalt, but did run down one of his toughs in the green jackets. There were always a few around, keeping an eye on things.
“Captain, sir.”
“You know Ismelda on Sleago? She sometimes works for a seamstress. She has two boys. One of them might have been a runner.”
“That’d be Nygeo. Deyalt told him not to run.”
“He won’t run anymore. He smoked too much. He’s dead. Two other runners tried to collect from Ismelda. One’s dead, and we’re taking the other. I thought Deyalt ought to know.” I offered a pleasant smile.
He froze for a moment. “Deyalt told ‘em all…”
“I’m not blaming anyone. But…perhaps Deyalt might put out the word-again-that I don’t like elveweed at all. I especially don’t like schoolboys being sold to or used as runners.”
“He don’t either, Captain.”
“Then we’re all agreed, aren’t we?” I smiled again, before heading back to the station.
Comparatively speaking, the rest of the afternoon was calm, and I caught a hack on South Middle a little after fifth glass. I couldn’t help thinking about poor stupid dead Nygeo, and the devastation I’d felt in his mother. It didn’t help that, when I arrived at NordEste Design, I was as worried as I always was when Seliora left Imagisle without me, even if she always carried her pistol and even if she was a very good shot. I hurried up the steps to the covered portico.
The door opened before I could lift the well-polished and shining but battered knocker that was shaped like a stylized upholsterer’s hammer.
The twins-Hanahra and Hestya, Odelia’s younger sisters-stood there.
